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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A SUMMER IDYL 



A SUMMER IDYL 



BY 



MARY LEEDY FLANIGAN 



NEW YORK 

THE COSMOPOLITAN PRESS 

1911 



I')" 



Copyright. 1911, by 
MARY LEEDY FLANIGAN 



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Each morn some rarer, purer incense 
Should break its perfect flower ; 

Each eve some sweeter, holier influence 
Hallow the twilight hour. 



INTRODUCTION 

In offering this simple little pastoral I have to con- 
fess that I have been guided by no controlling motive, 
governed by no design. Possibly I shall be censured 
for this — for letting my pen take its own course, my 
own eyes curious as to how it would come out. I can 
only plead my helplessness to do otherwise, preferring 
the instinct, so to speak, of my pen rather than the 
uncertain guidance of an unpracticed hand. 

On the whole, I cannot say that it is an expression 
of myself, save that my pen savors of myself without 
conscious direction. It is more an entity in and of 
itself, my part being that of a wholly impersonal 
agent. If design could be said to have entered into 
it, it was that the story should be a very crystal for 
purity, underlaid by that deep reverence for Deity 
which of itself should safeguard my hand from any- 
thing which could be construed to dishonor my God. 

Proceeding upon this basis, the story has been 
allowed to develop naturally, the parts growing into 
their several relations unassisted by artifice or con- 
scious art. 

I observe, as one from the outside, it has been a 
calmly moving pen, depending none whatever upon 
the stilts of the unusual, or dramatic setting; indeed, 
it seems to have concerned itself little or nothing with 
action or stirring movement to ripple the breeze of 



A SUMMER IDYL 



interest. It would take its own road on the high seas 
of literary adventure — a proud vessel calmly riding 
the ocean of its own solitude rather than touching 
port with fuss and steam to blare its loud clarion. 

It is offered as the infant attempt of a little flash- 
light of life at the deeply interesting period of bud- 
ding love_, wherein the little god persistently dupes the 
principles to what is an openly manifest fact to the 
initiated all along. Had they been aware — but that 
makes the story. 

Urged by no tyrant hand to awful tasks, 

I've dared to set a simple tale herein 

Unfevered by a lurid atmosphere. 

Or fetched-in darks to grip affrighted sense. 

When noble passions surge the blood, what they 

But heavy tools bent to a suffering art ; 

Here are enough for fullest reason's sway — 

And full enough to adorn a noble play. 

It has not pleased my pen to antic strange 

Nor caper out a show ; still less to be 

The paltering medium of a thin reform. 

No scourging lash of conscience bids me paint 

A martyr's doom by awful penance due ; 

Nor ever plot nor counterplot gives rise 

To curdling fear; nor ever hurry sets 

Its wimple in the blood to speed the end. 

But if the perfume sweet of virtue count, 

Or royal robe of honor have avail 

To flare sweet incense in your soul by that 

Keeps ever to the skyline true in aim, 

To mountain-topped desires that feel for God — 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Howe'er the feet in their attainment trip, — 
Then these commended are by every art 
To your most honored contemplation here. 

Tho' sweet, 'tis never an impossible she — 
Nor sweeter than a virgin ought to be. 
Tho' lofty, never but a normal he. 
Transcends ideal ne'er in what should be. 

When all is told 'tis but the tale o' an hour 
Where love is burst into its sweetest flower, 
Tho' many throes contort the close-seal'd bud 
Ere dews of happiness its petals stud; 
Soft nets about the feet all subtly wind 
An undiscovered helplessness to bind. 
Through which they tread the living coals of 

pain, — 
Disclosing at the end such pleasant plain 
As one would journey o'er the route again 
To find. The greetings, reader, of my pen. 

The Author. 



AT NATURE'S SHRINE 

What sweet communions wait the suppliant knee 
At Nature's throne! what ever varying moods; 
What ever new surprises for the reverent. 
The casual eye ne'er looks upon, but o'er ; 
Disdaining all the marvel at the feet 
Of blade and bloom, and all the common tongues 
That make her various language eloquent, — 
For yet more potent revelation lies 
Beyond. 

For such her meed is grudging e'er. 
And offers but a dull monotony 
Of plain, or mount's forbidding brow; nor aught 
Relaxes of her sternest mood to fit 
Into a whimsey's eye. 

Her lovers true 
She charms at every step; and all her moods 
Are sweet. A very maiden to be wooed, 
More lovable for ever- varying mood — 
Her pouts, her frowns, her smiles ; a despot queen- 
A thousand thousand artifices make 
Divinely sweet her rule. Is it her skies — 
Or summer flush'd, or winter chill — what more 
Of sweets could skies fulfill? — Or is it Jove, 
With thunder-tread upon their plain, disputes 
Their peace, and all the howling main below. 
With loud artillery'd boom, and vivid glare 

11 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Of red-tongued flame, by lightning's bloom dis- 
gorged ? 

Nor had the gods sublimer staged a play. 

With heaven for its boards. — Or earth — shall't 
be?— 

'Tis heaven's divinest still gives birth to spring. 

And thus through all, what painted show has e'er 

Fulfilled her speech? What architect hath graspt 

Her summer masonry of build ed bloom — 

Her sculptur'd frieze of cloud on heaven's dome ? 

What artist's hand but faintly counterfeits 

Her tint of waters ripe with purple glow, 

Her gleaming coronal of diamond stars? 

Who hath interpreted the soul of night. 

Translated yet the glories of the morn? 

What hand may print the sparkle of a tear — 

Or color in the canvas of the soul? 

What brush-stroke yet, tho' with a thousand 

tongues 
Leaping to syllable her glory there. 
But vandal is to rob the shining truth. 
And dull her countenance divine with youth ! 



12 



'Twas enough; just life — and l)uJ)l)Ung youth — 
Was divinest gohlet to quaffs 

'Twas Nature's court; an orient splendor ruled^ 
Exacting love and worship by sheer force 
Of color-glories spread was worship's due: 
The trees were flowing green, and laughing winds 
Their vernal waves did part; bright-vestured birds 
Their flashing shuttles shot through gleam and dusk 
To weave their transports in mellifluous song; 
A gold lay on the hills; sheer from the skies 
Blue glory dropt to crowd the river's brim. 

Lay 't not to tender warblings of the lark. 
Nor sweet insistence of the honeyed air; 
Nor yet unto the branches, passion-swayed. 
By all the red-breast's rapture spended there; 
Swear never by the rose's amorous breath. 
Whose wooings lead to brink of all delight; 
Nor by the pale moon-flower, cold in death. 
That parts its shroud in incense to the night; 
Nor wassail o' flowerfolk, dewbibbers all ; 
Nor spirit's challenge to the blue-moth lanes 
Stretched straight unto the purpling rim o' the 
world. — 

Nay; nor the silvery ripple's music hest; 
Nor dark wineflood deep in the forest gloom^ 

13 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Gemmed with the stars in crystal brilliance pure; 
Nor soughing pines, in solemn murmurs urge 
Their plaining monotone in ceasless dirge; 
Nor leaping falls; nor babel of sweet birds, 
With honeyed quarrels troubling all the air; 
Nor dryads' whisper of their forest loves ; 
Nor prattling leaves ; nor grass's secret wiles 
Laid at the roots of man to siege his heart. — 

Nay — this nor that, nor any gone before, — 
But all of these did weave their shining snare 
To mesh him in that subtle-fabrick'd net 
Is destiny! who knows — or sweet, or gall? 

And Edmund Aubrey, splashing blossom deep 

In sweet of things, betook his way, wind-shod 

For lightness, as his every footprint laid 

An ecstasy to line its track, or lift 

Memorial joy in nodding plumes to mark 

The sweet event. Unguided save alone 

By instinct's digits straight to fenceless fields 

Of rapture's world, his way lay anywhere — 

Save never yellow tide of gold might course 

Its fever flood across his peaceful path; 

Nor tyrant town its fetters clank to halt 

The steps in midget circling's ceaseless round; 

Where never care its irksome signet set 

Upon the braw to cincture with the fret 

Of galling bonds: 'twas Youth and Pleasure met 

To wear but joy's pure seal for coronet. 

The green world in his eyes — his veins — his soul, — 

His heart was full complexioned in his lay: 

14 



A SUMMER IDYL 



I'd take wings of the wind to roam, 
A vagrant, knowing no ties of home ! 
Tent me in dusk o' the leafy bowers 

With the social grass and the blabbing flowers ! 
Forth with the jackhare stalk the dews 
And trick from nature the morning news. 
I'd chase the long brown coil o' the road — 
The pulse of rapture my only goad — 
And swart my face in the gypsy brown 

1 would not give for a monarch's crown. 
With nature'n I 'n a council o' two, 

Mid a parliament of the winds and dew, 

I'd smoke the pipe of a friendly peace 

Out where the sachem stars release 

Their glory in a silver shower. 

Brings love and faith to perfect flower. 

There on the secrets born of the night 

I'd spend my heart in the sweet delight. 

Deep in the dusk o' the sweetheart woods. 

With the trailing vines for their maiden snoods, 

I'd dash the cup of joy unstrained 

And taste a sweet 'n each folly drained: 

I'd be its lover and sway with the leaf. 

Abide with the lily and be its chief. 

O out of the breath of blooming things. 

And out of the sheen of blazing wings 

I'd build me a world of a summer's day 

My soul should inhabit for ever and aye. 

The city, pagan at the feet of gold. 

Lay all behind; here reigned primeval calm; 

15 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Earth's wonder f est in glint and glow and gleam. 
And God made manifest in what they seem. 

The dream-world that brought nightmare in its 

wake; 
The real_, this_, wrought joy*s ecstatic quake. 
What weighed it where? What certain arch of sky 
Or bend of earth, just so it was the earth, 
Not stone and mortar superposed, nor tile. 
Its cold opaque for sky — shut out the heaven? 

So fate led like a roving bee, to lip 

Of bloom, or where the wisp of waterfall 

Dangles a silver veil before the wind, 

Zigzagging here and there, dizzy withal. 

Wherever beauty flung alluring thrall. 

Did gold of daffodil its sorcery lay 

Upon his heart, or roseleaf batter at 

Its gate, eftsoons its unbarr'd portals told 

Surrendered arms. A butterfly awing 

Had power to stay his feet with sweet discourse 

On honeyed themes ; a sprawl-legg'd waterfly 

Had entertainment for his idle quest; 

And to the robin's sweet song-battery 

A ready musketry, all practiced fine, 

Shot rapt attention from the ear, and e'er 

Surprised the sortie with full armament. 

Or whether into wild toccato broke. 

Or silence voiced the deep content within, — 

It was the human animal escaped 

16 



A SUMMER IDYL 



The shackles of the pent, steel-throbbing streets, 
To brush the spangles from the glistening blades 
And dabble in the dews that shrine their green; 
To pasture in the sweets of wood and field — 
Ay, brother with the bobolink and lark, — 
And, brothering, sense the angel things above 
In what their wild lives teach of Guardian Love. 

A rustic bridge- work spann'd a silver tide; 
Anon the steep road wound through giant oaks 
That topp'd a frowning height with cool, sweet 

gloom 
Where dusky aisles in sylvan mazes met 
And odorous bowers exhaled their nectar breath. 

With every sense alert to charm, and naught 

To caution windward, intuition taught. 

He plunged into the tangled dusk with more 

Of ardor than of safe discretion's mood; 

Unseasoned to the whelming change from light 

To dark, a web of vine made cruel sport 

To hobble his impetuous speed, his steps 

To chain, while all his onward motion flowed 

With effervescence of the river's glee. 

Impelled by its wild nature blind to race — 

Or channel free — or all its sluice-gates pent. 

The law of motion ruled no kinder hap — 

His feet pinn'd fast, his head still marching on — 

Than his downfall should be, — full shorn of will, 

Or manly might to plead a protest soft. 

A doughty knight with royal pursuits acquaint 
Had deemed it small mischance to be thus held, 

17 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Vine-pinioned sweet, but that it chanced a maid, 
Wild-blossomed in the leaf embrasure soft — 
As vine were sustenance to maiden life — 
And by her presence laid a prior claim 
To the rude fort of blossom masonry. 
One flower-eyed as chaliced stars of dew 
Illumed its twilight with their beams all pure, 
As stars of heaven oft gem the water's face 
In some tree-shaded gloom, with night's sweet soul ; 
For stars are this — ^the speaking eyes of it — 
The language of the soul translates its light. 



18 



II 



"Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves. 
Friendly sisterly, sweetheart leaves.''^ 

A snow-starr'd clematis had flung its shroud 

All mantling o'er an oak whose fringe of frost, 

Down-trailing to the ground, did circle in 

Such sweets of breath 'twas like a soul in bloom — 

Such incense filled its inner shrine. Soft stars 

Such fairy ceiling wreathed, their motion breathed 

Such soft fantasias on the tranced ear 

As fell in music's snow upon the soul, 

Divine as angel whisperings out of heaven. 

And here a dainty maid was wont to sit 

To share sweet confidences of the birds 

And pour her own soul out to them in song. 

And ever here her own bright joy was brought 

lUuminant to other joys it wrought 

On whatsoever eye its brightness fed. 

What time was purchased from the maiden dues 

Owed otherwhere; and while her fingers plied 

Some snowy task with needle's gentle art, 

A woman's heart was trembling into dawn. 

And never bird but showed a beady e3''e 

Initiate to her bosom's secret loves; 

And all the wild-wood folk had come to know 

Her fellowship by mute acquaintance bred — 

A nature shy as theirs — as sweetly true. 

19 



A SUMMER IDYL 



To-day her gown, some simple stuff of white, 
Escaped the slender throat, the mutinous arms, 
Baring a baby dimplement of flesh 
Nor maiden years outgrew, but sweet confirmed. 
Her bonnet careless fallen from her head, 
Confined by some soft suasion to the throat. 
Framed in her face like other blossom sprung 
From lily's heart, a bloom within a bloom. 
Since it was white, and a calla-shap'd thing. 
Within the blossom of her opening heart 
Such sweets exhaled them in her maiden thought 
As built up worlds and creatured them untaught 
Save by her dreams alone, were fairy guide 
To much romance. Of these herself made part. 
To live them o'er and give them fruitful speech 
Here at th' woods' heart with only friendly trees 
For ears ; only the brooks to run and tell. 
Thus had Sir Knight but fitted in her dreams. 
With royal pageant come 'neath plumes of peace ; 
But buccaneer to storm her peace ! but woke 
A revolutionary breast — what lived 
Beyond the shock of such intrusion bold. 

The trail of vine had been her leafy screen, — 

E'en now but half disclosed through sorceries green 

A haunting face medallion'd in the gloom, 

A face such as Velasquez might have warmed 

His canvas with dabbling in life itself. 

And pigment-bloom with flesh incorporate. 

To mold one o' those delicious blood-warm types 

Clings to his brush voluptuous- fam'd^ but for 

20 



A SUMMER IDYL 



The marble pallor gript her cheek in stone, 
The terror flamed her eyes with bolts of steel. 
This much defense upbore without; within, 
A clutching fear carried all her courage down. 
Being youngs the instinct of a wild thing 'twas 
Urged flight — or anywhere, or anyhow, 
So't brought release ; yet 'twas a woman's true 
Swift-ripen'd insight calmed the tumult's pulse. 
And taught the maiden breast its duteous part. 

E'en swift as had the truth been flashed within, 
More swift the outward signs of that within 
From him. The courtier's brow, bared to the locks ; 
(His height reclaimed e'en momently as lost,) 
The eye, protesting with fine speech eludes 
The tongue, had preconfest the tale contrite — 
The keen discomfiture bore down his pride 
Neath tingling shame, ere clumsy word upsprung 
Did mold the thought ; the mounting wave dashed up 
To flame his brow with red ; the gestured phrase. 
With eloquence afire: each of itself 
Bore courier tongue to lay his courtesy bare. 

And she, all instant thawed from fear by pain 
Of his, so quickly seized it seemed her own, — 
With much sweet chirp of words, like some ring- 
dove 
Its plaint did noise in flutterings o'er its mate 
Deep-wounded by some poison-arrow'd fate, — 
Of kindness babbled, and true woman-sweet. 
Essayed to staunch the wound himself had wrought 

21 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Upon himself — in blind affront to her. 
The maiden Clarice, o' Cameron Hall, eonfest 
Herself; and all its hospitage held out 
For offices all meetly due, as quick 
Her bended eyes uncovered stealthy act 
Clapt on a shield to hide the tell-tale blood, — 
And, brimming o'er with new concern awoke, 
A tender dew grew in their violet depths. 

He spoke ; and what of heaven may live in sound 
To break in sweetness on the ravished soul, 
Did roll its volume on the music tongue 
To quake upon the trembling ear's sweet pain. 
And stab the tender bosom's calm repose; 
Now passioned full of fervor's deepest note. 
Like chords of inner pain repentant sobb'd 
As they would wash his guilt of every stain ; 
Now tender as a bow drawn o'er the heart 
Of mother-love to lull the babe at breast. 

And ever on her unaccustom'd ear 
The pure melodious tones divinely broke. 
As some low music's thunder 'neath the bow 
'Plained o'er the viol in some soft dusk hour 
When waning pulse of day all faintly throbs 
In that soft, slumbrous, velvet-dusk of sound 
Lurks in its orient soul, — like muttering storm. 
All rumbling deep along the heaven line, 
Tied all of discord up in heaven of sound 
Names all of sweetness on its passioned tongue. 



22 



A SUMMER IDYL 



"The palm's most innocent of all my hurts; 
I would my feelings wore as much of balm^ 
Soft-swathed by tender bands your heart applied. 
To hush the conscience-wound stabs deep within 
To ooze a separate pain from every pore. 
And gall the spirit's lightness with the weight 
Of deep remorse — that ne'er an instinct's tongue 
Its warning urged to save such presence fair 
From meddling interloper on its peace." 

And died his voice like moaning under surge 
Loads all the wind with pain whiles treble notes 
Howl shrilly 'long the tempest- frighted air. 

As one just saved from dire impending doom, 
Whose tragedy yet half hung o'er, a smile 
Half settled on the eaves of her sweet lips. 
Half flickered into fear, like sunflecks loosed 
In play, now by the leafy shadows bound ; 
Nor anywhere a fast abiding place. 
Its hold so shaky was, all ruffled yet 
By late adventure's riot in the blood. 
Unsteady as the leaf all tremulous 
From the wind's kiss, uncertain of itself, — 
Finds balance never-where, — strange words up- 
sprung 
All cool denied her pulses' thunder-tides. 
Yet all confest by ague in the voice. 
Denied her truest self by playful wiles. 
And sudden archness leapt upon the tone, — 
Such traitor was the voice to truth within. 

23 



A SUMMER IDYL 



But, falling on a chord attuned, he knew! 
And more of reverence graced his heart, amen. 

*Tho' you have stormed the inner court ; surprised 
The queenly Presence at her royal farce, 
She begs to plead mock majesty alone. 
All innocent of dark intrigues ; nor e'er 
Adventured at the court of war to wage 
Unholy strife, that thus knight-errant bold 
Should siege with bristling arms, nor wait upon 
Her sovereign will, if so hospitably 
She lodge you at the inner favor's court 
Of kindly eyes, nor darts that anger throw. 
And war were in your eye, all frailly bore 
These breastworks 'gainst a smoke-breath's violence 
From steely-throated enginery of death; 
But poor avail'd to shield the crown'd head 
Against determined foe." So saying, shook 
The blossom-bells all dainty twined to form 
A crownlet for her brow. 

"Most noble queen. 
Your badinage doth carry deeper sting 
Than venom folded in, because, perforce, 
I sense 'neath words so light the inner calm 
Convulsed; the maiden breast's pure shrine 
Rude violated by a hawking eye. 
And talons tearing at its every peace 
By such a sudden swoop of dusky wings 
As bore their night upon the day; and all 
The very air did faint with fright for her 
It guardianed with its breath. 

24 



A SUMMER IDYL 



More loft than queen — 
That title oft its wearer but degrades — 
Were all the stones that build the crown's pure 

grace, 
A tongue of honor each, were honor's pledge, — 
Then had its cincture gleamed like palisades 
Of gold to hedge the royal safety in. 
But sadly oft 'tis otherwhere we look 
For that high course an honor shrines it in. 
But, dwelt within this hand fuU-sceptered might. 
The maiden brow more potent spell did work 
To wrong avert, had evil here design. 
Then for my gun I'd plead its amity. 
Nor foul intent to search a covert fair 
For e'en such prize therein surprised as knight 
Of old had tasted honor tilting for ; 
A weapon sooner pressed this doting breast. 
To still its beating heart, than carry war 
In such pure camp to plant its terrors there; 
To harry e'en the smallest feathered thing. 
Its white-souled honor ne'er has smirched with 

guilt. 
Still less that badge — the knightly honor — trailed 
Within the dust to storm defenseless foe." 

And eyes o'erleapt his speech with warmth to give 
Assurance born of truth, while in her own 
An answering glance glowed warm with quick ap- 
proof. 



25 



A SUMMER IDYL 



"Yet fortune hath but prickt the skin of woe 
A woe doth bleed to balm with such sweet dew 
Of showery eyes as never rose drank up 
A sweeter; and^ as sweets did crowd on sweets 
Till joy abashed scarce dare accept the fruit, 
Betrayed to all so sweet a mercy as 
Commends the royalty of the woman heart, 
Queen-kind to quick forgive a subject foe; 
Woman-tender, though her own breast be the sheath 
Of misadventure's cruel blade, to spend 
The flashing tear upon a brother's woe. 
She wears her chief est jewel in her heart 
Who rains a pity o'er misfortune's head 
And soothes with tender hand the wound so bled." 

Her earnest eyes all gravely searching truth — 
"Such gallant words undo the deed, were 't meant ; 
Unmeant, still fortify a loft intent. 
And bid in merit for their own reward." 

"Nay, lest my debt take on a mushroom growth 
Neath added kindness, I would name the terms: 
The gypsy Pleasure with her pretty wiles 
Has charmed my all too willing steps, my will 
Has clamped with such sweet bonds, I could nor 

choose 
But bask me in the sunshine of her smiles. 
Till I'm at last that moral reprobate — 
A lost man, subject to the changing winds; 
A vagrant star, to shoot whatever heaven 
More bluely glows, — a bumping earth perforce 

26 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Recalls to lowlier paths; springs duty up; 

Chides back to sense_, and common laws defied. 

But be the beacon-star to that lost goal, 

The Crow's Nest, named and famed for dusky wood 

All peopled black, not only by these birds, 

But that more vandal kind of human hawk 

As my late manners give them title to. 

And this heart beats within with purpose none 

But for your true rewarding till 't be done. 

'A springing will elects myself to be 
The guardian of your steps to towers so near 
But, for engirdling woods, your way itself 
Had clear defined ; yet some of pleasure still 
Grows on me thus to minister your will. 
Since our estates within such radius lie 
Enjoins exchange of friendly courtesy; 
Hence, but to humor whimsey fortune lone, 
My friendship won were better than begun 
The enmity of all so near a foe. 

'An enmity were that most bitter thing 
Nor deserts sweetened its companioning; 
And I to neighbor here had lived for naught 
All other days by these sweet days xuitaught." 
And more, with knightly bow. 

"Such flavored speech 
More homage shows than theme doth bargain for. 
Yet to the ear commends itself for sound. 
For sound that pleasing is, more pleasing is 
Than truth unsweetened by a music tongue.*' 

27 



A SUMMER IDYL 



The mood had come with the part was flung off 
With badge of it — the blossom-circlet claspt 
The girlish brow — and as herself more sweet 
Than queen, her converse lapsed to truer tone 
All finelier keyed to that was loft within. 
A tiny rut of brown defined their path, 
Etched out by lightnings of the twinkling feet 
Of scurrying forest-folk, all sinuous wound 
Its green-environed way, mid sweets of breath 
As bound the sense to other senses' death. 

Full soon the green gloom flung its portals wide 
Upon the sunshine road all flaring white. 
The forest furrowed to the bustling town 
Remotely wedged within the purpling hills ; 
Now deep in shade, or lightly mottled here. 
Where Phoebus shot his golden arrows through 
To etch the leaves in lace-filmed printery there; 
Now Brocken-peopled with strange monster shapes 
Vomited from the clouds: a long lean line 
Tapering to a distant point — gone out — 
To flash its slender spiral farther up; 
A pencil'd line enthreading mazy hills 
Beyond. 

With all these bright enchantments girt 
Was something mutual 'fess'd of varying lives 
Of each, gave many likes a common chord. 



28 



Ill 



There lives a power within the voice to mold 

The passions into vital flame, or set 

Such tender chords athrill divinely true 

To all a love demands — divinely due. 

Nor ever eye carried on its gaze the jet 

Or Itlue, hut on the tone gleams dross, or gold. 

And ever Edmond's tones^ ear-rending sweet, 
Commended to her heart their honor's source, 
Nor kindness lacked to gild remembrance more. 
So loud his clanking arms their presence spoke 
Made food for speech, — their dreadful import 

cleared 
Of foul misuse, and with unwarrior hand 
Dashed from his martial brow its austere front. 
Abstracting from his gun's mouth all its sting. 
In soft denial-speech of innocent innocents slain. 
The woodland folk were safer for his snare. 
Nor boded harm on his adventurous search 
To pry their secrets out; his huntsman's guise 
Was tongue to what he coveted — never ! 
And certes what an empty bag bore out, 
And all that traveled eye or tongue, in what 
Of words, spoke never of an eye was trapt 
To freight a fear on shyest creature round. 

'But your gun," she faltering urged. "What of hurt 
It holds is deadly to a kindness meant." 

29 



A SUMMER IDYL 



* 'Tis but an all too velvet heart behind 
This mask assumed^ to glance the transient eye 
From what a weakness is to what it seems, 
And thus unferreted nurse an inward love 
Woke scorn to gaze irreverent bared. E'en so 
This gun my faithful partner is to share 
My vices ; hoodwink every eye to see 
Its muzzle charged with fearful menace, whiles 
Respect doth deepen on the brow of all, 
To our elate importance. So with good 
Snatched from the teeth of ill, we spur our way 
To our own will, and joy of all the wood, 
Since ne'er a helpless creature therein laired 
Has tasted its death- wound from lead of ours. 
A pair too foolish far to look on death, 
Or plug a life with anguish tho' a hare's. 
Dissemblers both, nor savage instinct wakes 
Tho' covey of the speckled partridge brushed 
Brown noses wi' us. The flashing fins o' the trout — 
The jack-hare's ear attent to every sound 
Belabors it, — ^the lift of startled wings, — 
'Tis Motion's sweetest tongue to speak her grace, 
And tempt the eye from every evil's aim. 
These wood-folk all, how pretty their devices; 
What dainty snares they set to trap our love !" 

'Tis Poet you are, hates butcheries e'er," she said. 

'Ay, if a smuggler could be one with that. 
Who flies a pennant false, tho't be to hide 
A weakness all too truly brands him 'fool,* 

30 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Is but a knave disowns himself^ and soon 
Or late dishonor must be on his head. 
Uncovered of its puny artifice. 
I vrould I knew your heart more soft to find 
A verdict kinder for this fraud confest." 

"And I myself had sentenced to your scorn, 
To self most false ; and all you've named so dark 
To crown dishonor's brow were meetly mine, 
Failed I to own my heart has leapt to meet 
Your words with fervid welcome; their most kind 
Intent divined ere they were spoke. And I 
Were left to name your fault, 't would strip the 

heart 
To truth, nor e'er obeisance made without 
To custom sanctioned not by every conscience beat. 
And your own words should be the tools employed 
To work your error's instant doom; disguise 
Should elsewhere look for consort true; e'er more 
My linke'd mail should be unfailing sign 
Without, of honor cherished fair within." 

"Your words are jewels to be treasured 'yond 
That diamond or ruby claspt in bonds 
Of fire. Henceforth my loves are blazoned on 
My helmet's front; and I to war for them 
Shall take the blazing meteor's course for right. 
That all who see may feel my honor's sun. 
And taste my blade in tilt and tourney for't." 



31 



A SUMMER IDYL 



"Thenceforth all men more clean their honor held 
For one man's honor thus in purity washed. 
For Honor is that brightest steel e'er flashed 
A blade to speak its own defense. These woods, 
Could speak, did wound the air with piteous plaint 
Of wrong from stalking vandal's trail. I would 
A love so keen did dignify the chase 
As ruled to elevate it into art 
Disdains the poacher's cunning; loft disclaims 
The dissolute hand would dabble noisome stain 
At honor's very root by unkind snares. 
And reckless pillage in the royal preserves 
Of nature; claps a felon-brand on him 
So wanton as unmercied takes his way 
These lower creatures 'mong, as midnight masks 
Did fit become, being thus assassin-bent. 
Lords of the Chase a noble Order, e'er 
Should knighted be for chivalry where, free 
To rule, sweet mercy did admix therewith 
As something Godlike speaks its government; 
With courage all so high disdains a mean 
Advantage; seeks open field, pledges rights 
To all; whose warm blood bounds exultingly 
At splendid fight put up — ^to taste in this 
More exquisite thrill than crowding to the death. 
True ingrained with that finer grace of soul 
Uncovers t' heaven — for all these creature-viands 
Fill up this banquet-board of nature free, — 
Nor dines thereat without a grace to God." — 
With close-claspt palms, and little flickering lips 



32 



A SUMMER IDYL 



That trembled off a smile — "I dare not crave 
That higher thing would stay the murderous hand 
Forever. Then all men were e'en as you. 
On a mountain apart, and nothing left 
To set such goodness on that pedestal 
As shrines it quite alone." 

Low went the head, 
As the warm eyes flashed their deep obeisance. 
Then,— 
"Full knowing, I came unto the fount of nature — 
All blind 'twas wisdom's fount as well. New suns 
Of consciousness break dawn to flash their light 
O'er darkened covert of the mind. Methought 
Deep draughts and holy of the silences 
At mountain-top of things, whose ichor feeds 
The thinning veins and leaner shanks of age, 
Warming the wintry soul to ripened glow. 
There only Wisdom's golden fruits hung low; 
There lone her holy palms were touched in that 
Soul adytum — that inner solitude 
Grasps the Eternal with familiar eyes — 
All dimming here; e'en so I had believed. 
But lo ! there flashes up deep-f athom'd truth 
On lips scarce fluttered from their baby tongue ; 
And wisdom's lore doth crowd itself in such 
A bright-apparel'd speech as takes by storm 
The wavering judgment, all unbalanced quite 
As willow-bough keen whipping in the blast, — 
Stung to't by all its tempest-lash of facts.'* 



33 



A SUMMER IDYL 



And more, uncovered eloquence of soul 
Through eyes that burned a loftier, purer speech. 

And ever such discourse hung on their lips 
To light the moments up as flint struck flint, 
To set a sunshaft free in every spark, 
As on new wing some newer theme arose 
To find its poise upon the blade of wit. 
For youth ofttimes inherits age in what 
Its genius is — so wears its mantle ripe 
With honors full becoming it; draws in 
With mother-milk its deep philosophies. 
And something of its soul is there to claim 
Deep-rooted fellowship at very dawn. 

As on the low night-wind the nightingale 
Has poured its soul — when every note has died 
Its passion still rocks on the memory's tide, — 
So when he'd pass'd with all a courtier's grace, 
And only memory eyed him face to face, — 
For memory hath a sticking power for sweets. 
Lets all the bitterer things fall through atween,- 
The sense of him so bore upon the air 
He seemed to linger still in converse there. 
The music flow of words, the soul of him, 
The eyes of him, hung essenced on its breath. 
And e'er should hang down to the gates of death. 
For all unguessed was writ within their souls 
That evermore should deck a memory's brow 
With what a memory's keenest relish is, 
Tho' quivering with that memory's dagger-thrust. 

34 



A SUMMER IDYL 



For e'en as day succeeded day their hearts 
Were yielded guiltless as the potter's clay — 
All blind unto the sculptured grace it takes 
As dreaming marble into glory wakes; 
Nor felt the chain whose links all idly lay. 
Nor clanked an iron tongue of bitter day, 
Within whose fetters should their peace decay. 



35 



IV 

Such mold divine woke envy of the gods. 

To th' pure young eyes of Clarice Cameron 

He was of men she'd ever seen most fair. 

The courtly grace, the kingly brow, and all 

That goes to satisfy a woman's heart, 

Were his, and more, in grandeur's noble cast 

As men are made; not of the softer type 

Yields feminine grace, with scarcely more of 

strength. 
But like the Oak — king of his kind. A dome 
With intellect lit, wherein the soul and eyes 
Flashed searchlight out, nor rudeness in the act 
Ransacked your own — but probe his mastery 
Brought you under, your inner soul to sound, — 
As fumbling for a pearl within its depths — 
Honored him for the faith, and you the more 
For glimpse of beauty such a promise bore. 



3t) 



A lily maid all hlossom pure. 

Rooted on brow of hill, so fair as 'twere 

Its crown, stood Cameron Hall, the pride of all 

The countryside; its casement jewels sweet 

With rosy flames new-budded in the east. 

Or weight with farewell shimmer of the day. 

Flung backward to the dying skies the last 

Pale flutterings of the dipping sunset wings. 

Or was it pallor of the grayish morn — 

All laden guarded what was throned within. 

Rose towers mediaeval for their hint 

Of mystery and doom ; wee balconies. 

Like eagles perched on some steep cliff, hung there 

To guard their young. And on the verdurous lawns, 

Abeard with bristling gems in morning's fire. 

Were Beauty's vestments careless flung, or bloom. 

Or quivering leaf their perch, or flashed a sign 

Of kindled glory on some burning peak 

Remote. Or green caresses open flung 

Their honeyed fetters round the sleeping stone, 

Like orient ruin stood brow-deep in vine. 

And laboring with sweet breath beneath the load, — 

Or roof repined neath amorous years whose fell 

Conviction lived in many wintered stains 

Of silent-revel'd kisses on its brow, — 

'Twas Beauty's very self — ^the artisan. 

37 



A SUMMER IDYL 



The landscape offered changing vistas ; new 
Delights crept in to fill the eye, or hill, 
Or vale, or slumbrous water's gloom in dusk 
Of forest-deeps, or open-eyed in sun 
Shot glinting arrows of its hoarded light; 
Blue-hooded hills reached up to marry blue 
Of brooding skies, and, plighting holy troth 
In bridegroom's name, made heaven of all. 

And Clarice loved it all, as meet she should. 
'Twas here the mother in her blossom-flush 
Had drooped to death, and left such tiny bud 
With faint pulsations scarce took hold on life. 
So languid lay for want of mother-love; 
But to the father's prayer flared up to be 
Joy's beaming sun held up the dear dead face 
In newly-blossom'd sweets on baby-stalk. 
Was sorrow sweetened thus with light of her. 
And closer-link'd their love for her they mourned. 
While he his own with mother arts combined 
To fill up interval of wounded space. 
To graft her in a woman's strengthful grace, — 
Looked partial on her tender baby wiles 
With half a mother's doting eyes to feast 
Their full — all of his soul's sunshine orb'd there. 

Thus she, being lone, grew up herself the more, 
Nor frigid bent to artificial rule. 
Nor soul-starved on a cold-world regimen. 
A wilding flower sweet as violet's self. 
Initiate to their every sweetful art, 

38 



A SUMMER IDYL 



And pure as snow-crest queenly lily is. 

Whose snow was guardian to her virgin breast; 

Nor grander empire craved than being one 

With these — e'en as the stars, — God's children all. 

A sweet 'mong sweets, divined she not by aught 

Of contrast what of sweet she was; nor when 

She spoke was it the lightning's flash so keened 

Her wit with edge of fire it blistered where 

It struck; but sweet as honeyed stores strained out 

The cells of love. The ill she wrought, if ill. 

Was knowing her did whet so keen a taste 

Spoiled relish for all tamer sweets. And yet 

Her virtues of the violet borrowed sought 

The covert rather than the show of them. 

Her eyes were chalices of heaven, night-blue. 
Where stars burned deep as heaven's lamps aglow 
To light that blue-dusk sphere with such pure rays 
As daylight's glare denied its violet maze, 
And in their depths the violet story lurked 
Breathed modesty, and innocence, and truth. 

Were you a man, and they had put their trust 
In you, given you their wells of confidence 
Not every bolt of hell had fired you from 
The trust, nor broke the chains did rigid bind 
Your every impulse of the pleasured will. 
Where all of honor leapt to meet the faith: 
To range glad heights on lifted wings; to sail 
The clear blue of the steadfast skies, — above 
Deceit's low vaults, — where dwells eternal truth; 

89 



A SUMMER IDYL 



To own a purer self ; a purer world. 

Your nature reveled in companionships 

Of nobler purpose flashed to you; one look 

Smit passion's cheek all pale ; the tingling blood 

Caroused no more its heated channel's course, 

But took its pulse from such calm moon of eyes 

As nobly sways the ocean-depths of soul 

To such proud surge as owns but heaven's high rule. 

Tho' all your past had been a lie^ it fell 

As foul robe dropt, the while your inner soul 

Ascended white, — baptized in their light pure 

As she was pure; as true as heaven is true: 

So true it is, — man looks on virtue ne'er 

But vice wakes to its nakedness, ashamed. 

In their pure light you'd earned the sacred trust. 

Did pensiveness e'er drift its shade o'er light 
Their starshine bred, or tear globe crystal there, 
'Twas like the dew on flowers — new glories wed; 
New star of earnestness broke through the dusk. 

And e'er was character writ in woman's face. 
In her had climbed nor height of woman's grace, 
'Twas beamed forth here in tender light of morn 
To deck her frontlet fair with burning truth. 
Nor ever had she touched at woman's goal. 
In that rose-prism'd light turns all to love. 
To know the faintings of a heart beneath 
Its loaded bliss ; its yielded store of pain. 
The red mouth drooped as from o'erweight of 
sweets ; 

40 



A SUMMER IDYL 



The lips, proud mold of sculptor's passioned art, 
Blossoming speech sweet as the rose's breath — 
As sweetly kind — were rosy petals twain 
Their union owed to common bond of sweets 
A dallying bee might lightly part to suck 
The honey from their ruby cells; hard by, 
Rose-lightnings played their mantling surges o'er 
The soft surrendered oval of the cheek. 
Like summer cloud warmed up the evening sky 
With conscious blush, eyed by the sweetheart sun, — 
A soft May-bloom, pink-ripened in his glow, 
Half-bent the columned neck with loaded sweets. 

Herself the fairest product 'mong most fair 

Of nature's husbandry, loved all her works: 

The rustic lanes ; the fields ashine with dew ; 

The tender vocals of the wind and wave; 

The woodbirds' chorals in the dawn's sweet breath ; 

The swelling curves, or bolder flashing peaks. 

Of mountain's climb to kiss the shimmering blue; 

The pomp of rose at evening's portals flared 

To gild the glories of the dying day; 

The jewel'd blazes tangled in the blue 

That tents the mourning earth in night's sweet 

gloom : 
These, teachers all, each of itself did thrust 
Some part to bring to bloom one perfect flower^ 
Molded of all — yet fairer than them all 
In such presentment of transparent grace 
As folded tint of all in beauty's face: 



41 



A SUMMER IDYL 



The cheek that glowed and paled with changing 

breath. 
The eyes that shrined the heaven's tropic deeps; 
The tawny tresses' shredded gold, the pose, 
The haughty little airs, the mounting curves 
Were tongue to womanhood's maturing grace — 
Each flashed a vesper in the darkest place. 



42 



VI 



And I such madness wooed from nature's charm 
As made me hlind to every face of harm. 

Nor wind hath sails of such unerring scent 
To search a covert for the soul's content 
As devotee hent low at Cupid's shrine 
To drink in love in draughts of joy divine. 

'Twas destined they should meet. Shall pretty bird 
Forsake its nest because a vandal bird 
Has found it out? Still less, if vandal bird 
Knight-errant be, with all the title brings. 
And goodly fair; and he, the knight, by choice 
Surrenders to the instinct leads him there. 
To lose himself again in just such bower — 
What would you ? Shall a maiden scorn her own — 
Her throne-seat bower because, forsooth, a knight 
Had wandered there to storm its frail defense ? 
The more a guard had need for this, the bower ! 
Ay, destined they should meet again, and oft — 
The leapt-up vine fed by this scantest root 
Of circumstance should grow and interlace 
Their hearts ere wisdom's might had ruled to train 
Their course apart. 

To him, from this plateau 
Of wind-pured skies and blossom-nectar'd airs. 
His whole past seemed but sicklier for the town. 
Shut in with that vast hive of human bees 

43 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Whose search was given o'er to plunder e'er 
The sweets of things for yellow-honeyed gold. 
What were its miles of puny cells at last. 
But ant-hills swarmed by human insects starved 
For but a pinch of sky — a glimpse of heaven ! 
Here nature offered camps of unrestraint, 
Unvext by social clamps ; her wide free airs ; 
The blue of heaven unfiltered through the cloud 
Of poison'd smoke till sun but sickened there ; 
Glad ranges of the lanes and fields and groves, 
'Mid harping winds and minstrelsie of birds. 

Looked back upon from this cloud-soaring vast 

Serene of soul, this cool porch of the heavens. 

How artificial cold gleamed all its world ! 

The bulging majesty of puffing pride; 

The sensuous air warmed by exotic breath 

To spell a lotus-trance o'er virtue's heart ; 

The dizzy mazes of the reeling dance ; 

The thin-brew'd ale that spiced the viands of 

thought . . . ! 
'Twas but the husks his o'erstarved nature spurned. 

From this glad urn that nature offered him 
He drank the sparkling foam of pure delight. 
And Clarice was the listening world he sought, 
That other half, without which is no whole 
Of happiness — the ears we tell it to. 
Her taper fingers held out joy to him 
In all so pure a vessel, he looked through. 
As through a vase's crystal purity, 

44 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Nor paused to trace the vessel's chaste design, 

Save through wine-bibber's eyes — enchantment laid 

Impartial where they saw: looked through the cup 

Upon the dimpled, laughing face of Joy, 

And eager toss'd the draught, as parching earth 

Drinks rain, and is full glad, not asking why. 

At Nature's board where all was sweet, and all 

Divinely new, that Cupid lay in wait — 

Was chiefest sauce to banquet bounteous spread. 

He yet was honorably girdled blind. 

By every lover's vow was he not plight 

To one imperious swayed that other world — 

To this sweet hour had been the all he knew ? 

And as each pleasured hour succeeded each. 
Amaze did spread its wings and soar afar. 
And ever outward sought, or everwhere 
But there within, to name the reason why 
The earth was so transcendent fair — the sky. 

Of mother orphan'd ere he lispt that name. 

Or had a sister's darling love prevailed 

To save from harm ere threatening dart had sped. 

By fair example set — ^thus arm'd had known 

Nor flashing eye, nor pouting lips did breed 

So much of beauty's worth as lily-soul 

Neath honor's breast, pure as its snow. For aught 

He knew, save for that instinct vague within 

Pointed to better things by hunger pled 

For them, no lofter skies crown'd woman's world 

45 



A SUMMER IDYL 

Than that low-vaulted arch her willing soul 
Assented to — roofed o'er the pleasure world : 
The canopy herself had stretched^ shut out 
The tender blue above ; its holy stars ! 

Had but some prescience warned to sparing taste 
Delights so sweet at this child maiden's court! 

Or murmur rose within to wake alarm; 

Or tocsin from without shrill'd danger's ambush ! 

Such noble passions swayed his manhood's breast 

As molded honor's very law; nor steel 

Did clasp more rigid bonds of right than those 

His temper yielded_, glad impulsed thereto: 

'Tis all so subtle cord that trips our feet 

As dewy rope of cobweb makes more show ; 

'Tis all so subtle temptress bids our fall. 

Cloaked whitely pure — it shines an angel's garb. 

The rose-heart, pounding at its scented walls, 

Think ye, thrills not with rapture born within, 

Tho' blind to every agent of its bliss ; 

Thrills not with ecstasy of bloom, despite 

The canker at its heart breeds deadly bane, — 

Without the aid of outer air or light 

To show it why? So was he housed in bliss 

Was very blindfold to his dazzled eyes. 

The world with such a shining web was hung 

As all delicious wooed the willing sense. 

Was't his to part and peer, all blindly urged. 

Why flashed the silvery sheen all dewy here. 

Why duller there ? In this pure atmosphere, 

46 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Whose breath was stranger to the town^ nor aught 

That flowered here was strange. 'N that tropic night 

Of things the human firefly's blazing torch 

Oft seared the touch too tender trusted there ; 

And brows lacked innocence for diadems. 

The poisons there^ tho' subtly distill'd e'er. 

Yet prated of the drug on the sensuous air. 

In this pure world, or e'er their bitter lurked, 

'Twas under sugar-coat did break no law 

An honor ruled to take the sweets. Such power 

Hath what we would to wear the face of what 

We should, and with its blinkings false deceive 

The heart elected it — ^to be its own 

Cup-bearer of the dregs of bitterest woe ! 



47 



VII 

The flowers Mah of wisdom's lore; 
The winds philosophers are. 

O sweet is the breath of the heather. 
And glad is the bird on the wing, 

Nor ever the flash of a feather 
But woodlands with melody ring. 

O sweet is the brier of the hedges. 
And tender the blue of the sky ; 
Nor ever a sorrow it pledges 
In ever a sunbeam's eye. 

O tender the waters are wooing, 
And idle the shallop at play ; 

Comes never the breath of a rueing 
To shadow the syren-sweet lay. 

The gold of the sun is in flower, 

The rose feeds on dewdrops and love; 
'Tis Joy gives his wings to the hour — 

For joy beam the heavens above. 

A pomp is enshrined in the roses ; 

A snow to the lily doth cling ; 
Nor ever a bloom but discloses 

New raptures of perfume awing. 

48 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Each blade is a-tremble with jewels_, 

To nature's tiara belong ; 
Each songster's protesting renewals — 

Of ardors undying — his song. 

The world is a-shimmer before us ; 

The leaflets are laughing o'erhead ; 
The blue of the sky's bending o'er us : 

'Tis now — and with Joy to be wed. 

And near^ and nearer came the witching tones, 
Deep, resonant, heart-flung with pulses mad. 
And Clarice caught their lilt within her breast — 
Joy's ferment sweet, its riot in her veins. 
'Twas boom of waters in the thundered wave, 
The laugh o' the plunging brine, the crystal peal 
Of waterfalls. 'Twas sky and sun and wind 
Inwrought, woke nature's mad carousal in 
The human throat. 'Twas Joy incarnate there. 

A moment more and two glad eyes outpoured 
Their brilliance in her own. 'Twas sun on sun 
Noon radiance broke. The wind had commerced 

with 
His cheeks to blotch their tan a gypsy red ; 
His locks had felt its breath — a thatch toss'd o'er 
Like tumbled grass, to th' blade's tip freight with 

joy; 

The bared throat showed commingling of the sun 
And wind — bassoon for every music breath. 
Dismounting, Clarice stood upon the bridge 

49 



A SUMMER IDYL 



High-arching spann'd the silver tide below, 
An arm thrown o'er the chestnut's flowing mane. 
The gold of her hair was a coronal fair, 
A molten flame in wavy billows flowed, 
Whose yellow fires, corona-like, hedged in 
More glorious beauty was the sun o' her face. 

" 'Tis such a fortune greets me here as shames 
My best deserts; joy sailed on broken wing 
Before — a whole bird shall be now to cleave 
The sunny air of where a gladness beams." 
And from his eyes the world took fire for joy — 
Where Clarice was the world, and her heart fire. 
Despite the tender eyes her bodice blue 
But latticed in her bosom's snow ; nor spoke 
The timid flutterings ruled within her breast. 

"The very airs of heaven do braid delight, 
And all the roads of earth are privy to't. 
The sun, proud courser of the blue, descants 
On flowery meads, and boasts a glory's pomp 
On whate'er nursery his eye doth feed. 
Your song sticks in my breast to character 
A radiance unequal'd save by one 
Just flung to me from perch of yonder tree — 
My breast confessional made of all his joy. 
Both shall be kept memorial of the day. 
Whose brighter ne'er hath crowned the June, or 
May. 

"The top o' the world to you 
And skies are ever blue. 

50 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Be't sun that shines above^ 
Or clouds, 'tis full of love. 
The earth is glad with flowers — 
The fruit of shining showers. 
I'm glad for very breath, — 
Who'd frighten me with death? 
Who bred my heart to song 
Will keep me from all wrong. 

Listen to me, — 
'Tis sweet just to be ! 
The world is aglee 
For you and for me. 

*' 'Tis to the playing the day is — 
E'er to the straying the way is 

To j oy is beaming plight. 
On the breezes the breath is 
To diseases the death is — 

And all that molds a blight. 
'Tis to the roamer the joy is, 
But a misnomer the cloy is 

Of aught that buds to sight. 
To the dancing the tune is ; 
To the glancing the boon is 

To coin a pure delight." 

"Your madrigal is mirror to your mind. 
Child of free airs, and all unhindered suns ; 
Your breath is native to these haunts ; your soul. 
At one with Nature's secret self, gives throne 
To seal a majesty on all your speech. 

51 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Yourself shall my preceptor be in lore 

Unseals her rites^ till I initiate be 

In that most deep and holy mystery^ 

Her Order — rules the earth and sky and sea." 

*'Glad would I speak for nature-folk^" she said, 
*'Whose beauteous laws bid never for revoke. 
Were half you load on me but honest load — 
Weighs secret sources of the Infinite Mind; 
For Nature but the true exponent is 
Of her Creator's self. I can but guide 
An erring tongue attempts to speak for all 
What mystic Truth has never yet laid bare. 
But yonder mead brims o'er with flowers, — shall 

they 
Be Nature's tongue to plead for me such art 
As makes my own but pulseless, pale, and cold. 
Sweet Ministrant to man's diseased soul, 
Sweet Artist, o'er whose painted curtains roll 
Perspectives of the Infinite, be my 
Enchantress here ! load silver on my tongue 
To melt and forge its bright transparent way 
Through that speech pure as water's crystal tide. 
Most eloquent is thine — the truth alone." 

"Already is my soul's obeisance won 
By sageness of your prayer ; nor can such lips. 
So pured, be prostitute to error's law. 
Nor shall a craven doubt slip in to crowd 
With unbelief, tho' every face of truth 
Beam false. Your gallant listener hence," he said. 

52 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Thus spoke ; and most surprised herself at words 
Upsprung from tender shoots all new to her. 
Had root within ; nor guess'd his eyes alone 
The sun-touch was to flare their ready bloom ; 
Nor knew the miracle was of the heart. 
All momently matured, as folded rose. 
Full ripe within, bursts open at the kiss 
Of sun, or flaunt of wind, — so sweetly did 
Both mind and heart unclose ; so sweetly did 
The budding thought to such pure petals ope. 

'This frailest little star-eyed daisy lives 
To battle with the what of strength it owns 
Against the heart grown adamant to all 
The loftier language of a Father's love. 
It prattles cheer in such familiar tongue. 
Such dear familiar ways as do intreat 
Not only willing slaves of high degree. 
But captive takes the obdurate ears ; the eyes, 
O'ercallous'd by a flinty fate, to own 
Their friendly ways ; the morals that they teach. 
Where stars too coldly gleam, or lofty are. 
'Tis like a pallid wine strained through the teeth 
Clenched tight against such flow of medicine 
As palls upon the tongue, to feed at last 
But most indifferent life to their sore need. 
Here are the spangled heavens all mirrored bright 
In thick-sown stars below, whose softer lights 
Uphold the fainting gaze for loftier sights. 
Their little daisy souls are seed from heaven, 



53 



A SUMMER IDYL 



I like to think^ to grow the angels on : 

For whoso loves these little innocents 

Within the heart feels little wings astir." 

With more such lovely words she spoke, and pass'd, 

Their little heads all nodding bright farewells 

Where'er her foot did plant a trembling bliss. 

■'Nor shall a daisy hence but speak to me 
Of something God would have me know," from him. 

From out a soft nest wove of tumbled grass 
A wild-rose lifted up its blushing cheek. 
All guilty sweet as maid did stammer out 
Confession of the truth she seeks to hide — 
In tender bloom's incriminating surge. 

'Within this lovely blossom's sweet shy face 

I catch this little grace, — tho' not to be 

The thing whose seeming it doth wear yields this 

Of truth : the habit brings somewhat of growth, 

The virtue snares. This flower sculpt in sweets. 

Innocent of those pretty shames that wake 

The blush's glow, is yet lovelier for what 

It paints upon the thought of these — tincturing 

All modesty sweet, being like it. Nor is all 

But seeming: where instinct doth seek a grace. 

It is its own surest guide unto that end. 

Nor were this true, still did the semblance load 

Somewhat the real grace on whom it sits: 

Living in thought of him who puts it there, 

Others seeing so, mirror back; thus all 

54 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Unconscious help to set the virtue fast. 
Or be it evil's face_, — here still did cling 
As very mottles to the serpent's skin." 

He, plodding on with e'er top-heavy step. 

Lest his uncertain foot prove juggernaut 

To some sweet life, gave quick assent to all 

Herself, a flower-nymph — their Oracle, 

Gave forth. Nor had his glances blossom-wise 

Been schooled to see if aught of fault there lay 

In her philosophy ; nor yet his mind 

Had will to raise a shattering hand against 

The lightest thought she flashed in speech. Just 

that 
She said it sealed it true, because 'twas said. 
And seemed at instant sight the thing he'd known 
Alway — so eternal she did set all truth 
Herself made truth by simple utterance sweet. 
So said: "Profoundly I acknowledge what 
No dusty lips of ages gone could more 
Impress with world-old truth, and wisdom's lore ; 
Nor in that city's belt, my home, is half 
So sage a tongue to pluck so sweet a truth 
From hardened shell of fact, save in some hoar 
And grizzled head, abstracted from long search 
Through musty tomes, and mustier aisles of life. 
And given wind from all so dry and crack'd 
A tongue as withers up its fruit." Then she: 

* 'Tis nature's tongue gives boldness where my own 
Had falter'd neath the load its frailty bore. 

55 



A SUMMER IDYL 



'This floating thistle-down this lesson brings : 
An evil may fly afar on gossamer wings 
To plant with velvet touch the venom thorn 
Doth bristle up to wound the heart's sweet peace, 
And feed a festering memory with its hurt. 
E'en so — the panther borrows an angel's tread 
To flaunt that grace himself law-giver is 
Thereof to give his pillage more of state. 
And Calibans there be 'neath outer cloak 
Takes on the puring snow, while hell beneath 
Its fiery-furnaced hate doth smoldering seethe." 

She spoke; and still her words beamed more than 

said. 
So fine is dust of gold, mere frame of words 
Is like a cage confines the bird itself 
While countless lyrics burst their bondage bars 
To sow the air with golden melody. 
So pure the elements admixt within, 
The grosser, outer air could ill contain 
Their conduit unpervert. Most loving touch. 
Attempted paintings of their sphere did halt 
At lameness spelled perfection with a fault; 
Most loving art but ended in despair 
To limn the soul that featured it most fair. 



56 



VIII 

With Slackest falsehood's front withheld the truth, 
And forged the manacles of hitter days. 

And as the sweet dawn fountained newer days 

Each brought to light a tend'rer employment's ways ; 

And e'er they strolled the shadow-mottled path 

To denser gloom of dusk-brow'd woods to find 

Sweet Reason's throne all dark beshrouded o'er — 

With all such feeble flickerings of her light 

As nothing steadied was the uncertain pulse. 

When once a rustling stirred the leaves, tho' slight. 

It set a panic in her face spoke fear 

Of what, she knew not what, and Clarice clung 

A timid moment to the manly arm, — 

It set such currents coursing in his veins 

Transcended call for such a tumult in 

The fright he owned. And now remembrance 

tugg'd 
To warn when yester's ball went gleaming past, 
So close its breath made commerce with her hair, 
He'd shivered at the consequence with some 
Unreasoning fear. — Nor intuition woke 
E'en then to see had selfsame threat hung o'er 
Another head nor had his heart stood still. 

A cloudy light of reason, wherein no sun 
Shot out his certain rays to set facts clear ; 

57 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Or but the moon's illusive glamour held 
Him in such Romeo-trance as he himself 
Betrayed to every motion of the tide 
Engulphed. A golden mesh of glory hung 
Its tapestry round to girdle all the world. 
That this should be that cosmic speck, himself, 
Revolving round its central sun, the heart. 
And all this glamour fed from that bright orb, 
Was still unbroken dawn to densest night. 

Who looked on beauty as Divinity's mold. 

Who down and worshipt at the shrine of dews. 

An earthly heaven, atwinkle with the stars — 

Flashing its million million little suns 

To fill his eye with ecstasy; who saw 

A thousand glories on a single blade 

Of grass, where blue and topaz torches flared 

With this sweet breath, — or that, turned kindling 

rose; 
Or paled with spirit green of inner fires ; 
A changing blue and green in one, woke up. 
Or all of crimson fill the glowing cup ; 
In this sweet light, a-load with twin blue stars 
Astride one stem, to wink up claret eye, 
Now turned to little deep-blue wells of light: 
Who saw the fields a sheeted flame of pearl 
With rose-stars flushed, or nursing pale-green bloom 
In prism'd glory's bed ; a ghost- white beam, 
A yellow, on the rose-scorched crystal's flash, 
A gold-heart fountain on the blood, blood rose, 
A rose-fire on the diamond's glinting blue ; 

58 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Each facet there a dissipation's shrine^ 

Each glory spoke a newer heaven to worship: 

Who saw in every wink of Gheber flame 

A taper blazing out its Author's name^ — 

A holy beam reflected in each ray^ — 

How could mere beauty lead the heart astray ? 

Or that another worshipt with him there — 

Did that blare tongue 'twas her sun made them fair ? 

Intoxicate with every breath of morn. 

What steadier gaze should sudden rise to greet 

Rose-shimmered rapture in the dawn of love ? 

The wine-bred air with sweetest tinglings roused 
His dormant self till every vein caroused ; 
Gave him a thousand eyes to see a joy — 
Was night before. The buoyant nature, freed 
From erstwhile clamps, took sudden sail to soar 
And taste but stars in this sweet heaven of things, 
Nor felt the solid earth beneath his feet 
To chain him to her laws. Sprung from himself — 
His past, 'twas like a shooting star, nor whence. 
Nor whither of a certain path; a reeling. 
Wheeling orb, drunk with its own ecstasy, 
What reasoning, sober world should train its course } 

Air sparkled purity; the sun beamed it; 
His heart was as his nature fed, all pure. 
With a new heaven above, a new earth round, 
Was't strange, jUst born into't, that he should feel 
His way with tottering steps, — nay, sometimes fall ? 



59 



A SUMMER IDYL 



And shall it be thy judgment^ critic world. 
Denies a honeyed mercy's store? O man. 
Withhold thy blame till in thy own soul's depths 
Thou'st known a crystal purity's purging tide, 
The whiteness of a soul untaint with guile — 
The majesty may there erect itself 
Upon that ego, proud yclept yourself, 
A very snow of conscience in the heart. 
'Twas happiness ran the whole stage o' the eye, 
And not its course to reason calmly why: 
All fool-sweet innocent, a baby's path 
Had parallel'd it with as dark intent. 

'Twas like the rose — sweet 'cause 'twas sweet, and 

not 
Because it labored so; or rose-scent breeze 
Its breath is, not knowing so. 'Twas innocence 
So filled the being it could but echo there 
The majesty that lined the road all fair, 
Tho' ne'er of majesty itself aware. 

Had he come out to Nature's house afuU 
Of bladder- words that puffed a judgment's face. 
Or prudence clamoring for untitled grace? 
For nature's physic he had come, and this 
The goblet offered. Was't his to quarrel raise 
Because 'twas sweet? The tiger purrs content. 
Nor whets his claws against a peaceful air. 
Man, but a few removes above the brute. 
Blinks sleepy in the sun, his watch relaxt. 



60 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Unarmor'd for a tilt with skulking foe — 
To taste his steel too oft with honor's death. 

He only was aware of nature new. 
Wherein a sudden sun blazed up to show 
His past all dark. New promptings from within 
Their sweet stress laid upon him, urging love 
For all mankind; a tender fret bore in 
Bespoke unravelings of their woe, if shine 
Of his could something of their dark unknot. 
At heart a new Sir Galahad rose up 
With brain and nerve on fire for th' holy Cup; 
A giant to unchain the woe-bound world. 
And plant a balm in every breeze unfurled : — 
Did One so fill his eyes with sweets her own 
The world reduced to facts — meant Clarice lone. 

And for so sweet a world poured knighthood's blood 
Since ever was a world to drink its flood. 

All sudden opened in the flare of light 

No eyes but feebly bore the blinding sight. 

His tendered vision could but feel its way 

All vague. Joy's sun had maimed the optic nerve. 

And something of the judgment's stature due 

Suffered a stunt, to reason not at all, 

Or thusly; leisure brought the warming sun 

'Neath which his thawing heart did melting run 

To philanthropic love. So, in this wise. 

That Clarice, being one, did move him so 

Gave proof of his abounding love for all: 

61 



A SUMMER IDYL 



For was it not humanity's sore hurt 

Brought harm unto the least — since_, being part^ 

Through one did misery's inlet deluge all? 

Was't not so in that other Paradise? 

He reasoned thus? Nay, what of reason's need 

Where faith so beautiful sufficed for all? 

Where reason takes its stumbling way, the faith, 

Sunlit, all easy as the silver shad. 

Eludes slow-plodding logic's slippery hold — 

To touch a goal in every gleam of gold. 

Where spoke his faith, then spoke the truth behind : 

The love of one does breed a love for all. 

He was in love with all the world ! Thus he, 

O'ertrue to love's own innocence, the last 

To fathom tender troublings girt within. 

All blind gave in to every transport's rush — 

To plant a sting in every transport's hush. 

So sweet remembered sweets, — so bitter are. 

Flared o'er the soul's night but a waning star. 

The hours were sped on happy wings all pure 
As some snow-wing'd processional aloft 
With graceful pinions skims the aerial blue. 
And Sunday bore upon their gleaming crests 
As sanctuary for too happy breasts. 
Nor Sunday-virtued in her Sundays 'lone 
Was Clarice. Tho' to other days the spire 
No less the other six caught up its fire; 
Nor false note fell from any day where all 
Was blent in one sweet choir the Sunday woke — 

62 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Nor let the memory wane its leaven had 

Miscarried. Loud the clanging bell intoned 

A welcome to the kirk for each and all. 

And Edmond found his way; and Clarice^ too. 

When halfway there a bird with helpless wing 

Lay fluttering in their path. A tremulous hand 

With touch of down, all tender hovered o'er 

The mangled mite, while all her heart was poured 

In soothing care. The dusk-blue, tender eyes, 

Chance-raised, held in their depths the rain, as they 

Were flowers freight with morning dews; and he 

The beauteous vision drank while some tight cord 

Gript at his heart to tear its seals of dew. 

And mingle breath with breath of passion in 

Her breast — a passion all divine as heaven. 

And both were stronger for the help she gave 

The mute appealing bird, as ever must 

Men reap the fruitage of their deeds. Whate'er 

Of beauty caps the beauteous deed, its crown, 

Or likeness oft, sits on the doer's head 

To give him glory for't; and true it is — 

The deed, tho' black or white, is but the certain 

Lineage of that the heart is parent to, 

Tho' struck from the will, as sparks from the forge. 

By impact sudden as surprises there 

An unknown force — tongue to its own bright glory, 

Or fell conviction oft. 'Tis even so 

Nature hath raised a voice against a vice 

By myriad tongues of white 'gainst one of black 

In snowy-petal'd blooms that line her track. 



63 



IX 



'Nor all of poison loads the aspic tongue; 

Nor all of tragedy is lived in show: 

The lead of fate is oft the plummet swung 

By our own hands to sound the depths of woe. 

Over the daily cup of joy light views 
Were clashed of noisy themes about^ or now 
More delicately waged. Of Poesy's art 
Her tender fancies lightly brushed to skim 
Defects all curdled in her violet eyes 
To cloud the perfect brightness of its face. 

'The rhyme a hobble is to maim the flow 
Of that pure current is the poet's speech — 
The visioned fire that pins the poet's gaze^ 
The picture kindled in his soul with all 
Of eager life and motion in its wings^ 
Shall't senseless hammered be to dull-orb'd light, 
Reflecting nought but that insistent note 
All shining polished as a shaft of steel, 
Must ring, tho' but to sound an empty vault; 
A thing of iron pounded into shape. 
Or ductile drawn to fill a desert space? 
The eagle 'loft whose splendid pinions brush 
The sun — 'twere meeter he should clip their might 
To practice but a pigeon-strut confines 
Him to the ground ; or lordly oak should stoop 

64 



A SUMMER IDYL 



To cram his giant boughs piecemeal to fit 
The whimseys of a cage the rhyme claps on. 
'Tis motion's freedom gives it all its grace 
Must take its way unhampered in its space. 
Free as the tread of stars^, as pure of face. 
Where sounds the bell with empty tinkle lone 
The sense but drowses for the ceaseless drone. 
Thought is a blade to cut its own keen way; 
To cramp it is to taste its biting edge 
In flow of blood whose stain is murder to't." 

His soul, as from a deeper motive stirred. 
Like twin stars glowed through midnight of his 
eyes — 

"And I had dared to set a fault in place 
I'd lodged it in a pair of rebel eyes: 
To let the form so sit upon the sense, 
Is't not to crush the soul for mean surtout ? 
Where strength a beauty is it often shows 
But hideous lines in detail — taken whole's 
A masterpiece of art. Take some seam'd face 
And strip its hull to what is fair beneath — 
And all is fair for what you there unsheathe — " 

"The form e'er passes current for what's beneath." 

"Did never words nor more of beauty breathe 
Than they could frame, coarse vehicled unto 't?" 



65 



A SUMMER IDYL 



"The sweets we breathe were never clapt in sound ; 
The rhyme to poetry is but the bit 
The wild steed champs ; it breaks his native j&re." 

*'Nay^ but the hedge defines savanna's bounds 
Each hoofbeat clangs to print with more of fire^ 
Confined to limits stricter. If the ears 
Offended be by what the eye relates. 
They first should master them of what it hates. 
That they may worthier sort their judgments fair." 

"Perforce the eye reports but what it sees — " 

"And shall it skim the wave but surface deep 
To lose the nobler currents 'neath it sleep? 
For art is as you take it ; o'ermuch as 
You make it in the eye. Where rhyme's its shape 
'Tis no deformity unto the grape." 

"Such sweets had graced a fairer hull for cup." 

"The cast of bronze takes on the features' mold 
Being all that gives authority thereto. 
The thought comes habited in its own garb : 
Ne'er Roman toga clung to Grecian slave, — 
The outer features being what they must 
From inner creature their creator is." 

" 'Tis clapping all too heavy- featured mail 
On shoulders speak an entity but frail; 
And we but judged the toadstool by its legs, 
We'd say no toadstool is, for want of pegs." 

66 



A SUMMER IDYL 



"And I but answered half the wit in eye 
'Twould flash the wings to make a toadstool fly; 
For all the grace that lines a woman's eye 
There's more of strength to name her passions by. 
But frailly as our subject wears its show 
'Twas conjured into being by your blow." 

** 'Tis a harangue wears sweetness of the rose 
Where bitter of the thorn its stings enclose." 

"And 't please you well to quit this fencing wit, 

I needs must vent the tide provoked by it." 
** 'Tis tiresome rhyme that rings no ending chime," 

"But till we've flailed it out where is the grain. 
And fruit of this discourse, shall be its gain? 
The music balance ever looks to sound 
For music's punctuation is its soul; 
'Tis accent of the thought — its emphasis — 
Loads a melodic sweetness on the rhyme. 
Where puffed and labored to, then rhyme, I wis, 
As any other fault, looks gross in this ; 
The river glides in liquid motion free ; 
But chain it — 'tis an artificial sea. 
Where effort is the chiefest way to rhyme 
It heads the way to poet's chiefest crime: 
Aught labors into lines, and never flows — 
'Tis smell betrays the artificial rose. 
And this be fault doth shackle any verse : 
The labor to it is its primal curse. 
Immortal music on immortal lyre. 
Immortal speech born of celestial fire, 

67 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Shall mortal tune it to his own desire ? 

True poetry is gendered in the soul^ 

No art can simulate^ no skill control. 

Wherever clap the castanets in sound. 

Then these are part of it, nor rendered so 

By heaving labor to 't: a soft-purred sleep's 

More neighbor to 't, that snores in rhyme. 

The music line in sweet accentuation ends — 

'Tis but the sun a-sparkle on the wave. 

Its ornament, and ne'er contortion's slave. 

Where motion free as stars all rhythmic flows 

To jingle off a rhyme, or sweetly claps 

A cymbal in the act — 'tis one with it. 

And native as the breath that stirs the rose 

To sweets, the lily to a separate sweet. 

'Tis nature sets the pace shall govern all 

In what a nature is, and not its thrall. 

But even stars are harnessed by the might 

Compels their course, tho' all unseen. A law 

Is governor to e'en the atom's prank. 

And every streamlet flower that lines its bank: 

A law of being plants its nature there. 

And all of freedom first its yoke must bear. 

'Tis nature's secret while she labors e'er — 

So joys in it, it seems a labor ne'er. 

Tho' seeming wanton, she is most austere, 

And all her brightest sorceries are but 

The velvet cloak to iron rule hides all 

Its clock-work underneath ; her lightest word, 

Tho' lilting on the wings of rhyme, is yet 

As spark of steel flamed from the anvil's might. 

68 



A SUMMER IDYL 



"Be subject to her laws in prose, or verse; 
There only freedom is, in nature's court. 
The stars themselves. 'Tis music beat in spheres 
Owe e'er their sweetest motion to the laws 
Of harmony — iixt as eternity. 
Soft-footed seraphs tramping o'er the night — 
The heaven's troubadours all angel white ; 
Such rhythmic tremors shake the fields of light 
The heaven's rafters tremble with their might ; 
Such music cadence waits upon their flight 
As heaven itself doth languish for the night 
To drink the sounds with ever new delight ! 
'Tis but the dial of nature's face to time 
Heaven's glowing panorama with their chime 
Whose symphony's the organ-roll of worlds." 

The flower-petal'd ears assumed dismay — 
"And is it not my thunder loads your say — 
In the unhampered line, its easy flow ? 
Yet pounding sound, 'tis but a heavy go. 
Nor even scroll of heaven so blinding is 
To smite my vision dark in night's eclipse : 
I still am haunted with some memory's shaft 
Impales its scrannel corse of theme gone dead 
For lines so limply wrought they own no life, 
Tho' bulging with the bulk of hollow sound. 
For where the master sets a perfect rose, 
A thousand faint for what of sweet outflows 
Is life-blood drained for wound of pruning-shears ; 
Strength dies to fatten out a silly space. 
'Tis but the cripple e'er with hobbled feet 

69 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Must mince along, nor taste a freedom's stride. 
The vacant thought stalks loudly through the rhymes 
And for their failing sense makes much of chimes ; 
In windy numbers doth such themes compound 
The senses ache for what they gorge of sound. 
It is the faithless fence that sways and falls. 
Save where the propping post its strength recalls — " 
And silver-pealed her laugh at thing decried 
Rude rushed upon her tongue, its laws defied. 

"This war all lightly waged with bladed words 
Neath skies all sweetened with the smoke of 

flowers, — 
Such flowers of speech doth brim each weapon's 

mouth 
And futile all as knifing of the dead, — 
But proves at last what utter vacant stuff 
May rule to raise the wind ; what whimsey bone, 
Rude wrangled o'er, may set a world aghast 
By ruin red wrought in its dripping j aws : 
And that, tho' justice hover either side. 
Love sweetlier 'vails to hold its even scales 
Out of war's breath. Is't not the verse's fire 
We love — its form be what it may ? — ^is all 
Of life to it, whatever form, to make 
That form seem best is native to 't?" from him. 

" 'Tis saying we like a thing, whate'er it be 
Being clothed in outer garb fits perfectly." 



70 



A SUMMER IDYL 



'We can but like a truth abhors disguise 
Tho' what it tell be hateful to our eyes." 

'But truth comes sweetest in that bright array 
Dispenses gladness on its every way. 
War hath its uses sweet in certain fruits 
Bore never sweetness but for bitter roots : 
'Tis in the brandished thought the inner mind 
Oft clears itself of doubt ; its own beliefs 
Doth steady with the crutch to others held, 
Defining them; most in the war defending them: 
Like lightning's blaze did clip the land of all 
Its foetid sours and damps, to set it pure, — 
The rapier's edge cuts clear our own beliefs 
In war for them. Nor ever mind more sure 
Of's self than when outspeaking for its faith — ' 
In threshing out the seeds of it beneath 
The open glare of its most enemied eye," — 
From her. 

And thus, as word clash'd flinty word 
Woke fires between, were lit the day's sweet hours- 
A subtle pleasure brewed spoke not itself 
Lumbered with sound, but soft as silver rill 
Wakes up the flowers, its essence watered deep 
At roots o' the heart, to bring forth in its season. 
Or on the marge of some still stream their gaze 
All raptly traced the pastoral's flowing lines. 
Or climb'd the epic tale's bold flights of song 
To knighthood's valor and the kingly deed, — 
Or 'twas a barque chained willing hands to task 
Of skimming o'er the wave — Joy at the helm, — 

71 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Was such admixture of the elements 

As spoke for nature's ripening in the breast. 

In every water was a syren's call; 

And every day death was the vesper fall 

Of tend'rer joys; and every twittering bird. 

And every languorous note in breeze's hum, 

Woke blissful answer in their throbbing breasts— 

Nor wot 'twas love that spake ! so willing walk'd 

Into the open snare whose shining web 

Gleam'd all so gossamer-fine it clouded not 

The sun of heaven, nor heavier bodings waked 

Than did that orb to dim their radiant joy 

So tragic blind the innocence of youth ! 

So infinite fine the net all demon-strong 

To crush, with all its cruel tentacles 

Behind. Ne'er subtler hung its beauty up 

To starve a joy within its shining prison. 

Like steely bands should grip a mortal pain. 



T2 



X 



It was a child at feet of Knowledge, loiv 
All trusting knelt; hut 'twas a woman rose, 
Brotv-pale tvith pressure of the thorns of woe 
Was college seal of graduate heart that knows! — 
Initiate to the secret pains — the strife 
Iron rules that University — is life! 

And evening's blush was on the sennight's brow; 
And evening's smile. 

Bright shone the seventh day, 
Full near its close, that swung the halving clasp 
Should circle in their ended joy. Above, 
A tender patch of sky with cloudlets bloomed 
Where evening's crimson light with pearl did wed, 
As rose, half-blushing, half to lily paled. 
Its blossoms wreathed to crown a day so fair, — 
Whose fairer ne'er had dawned, — wherein these 

walked 
The flower-tufted lanes, and drank of joy 
Had been their poison's brew in base alloy 
But for the flower of innocence, made pure. 

And Edmond, stranger yet in all had past 
To every nobler tide of love, soul-deep. 
Still unawake to tempest threat hung o'er 
With such ink-gloom of prophecy as told 
The sun in heaven veiled to ever peace; 
Xo ever more of joy; — as guileless laid 

73 



A SUMMER IDYL 



The trance unto the hour — the glowing scene, 
Gilded by sun-dipt brush in nature's hands. 
That this child-maid should be the j ewel bright 
Whose flashes kindled all this radiance — should 
Be fairest heart of it, 'mid fairness all — 
But leapt into his blood in that grim hour 
When Truth unsheathed her shining blade to blaze 
Its stinging lightnings o'er his naked soul ! 

They met a swine-herd laboring up the road 
With stolid visage, nor uplifted gaze, 
Whereon the scene lay gladdened in his eyes. 
His own, brimful of what they saw, he could 
But wonder how an eye could be unmoved 
When heaven itself did shine up from the grass. 
Hung trembling in the leaves, and kiss'd the 

flowers — 
A heaven shining in each jewel'd grace. 
Nor need to look on stars to catch its face ! 
On winged feet the syren led apace 
Where Fate should scissor off the ended race ; 
Nor e'er cortege to burial of joy 
Mistook a sweeter route ; more bright decoy. 
Nor ever word was spoke but sweet ; nor sound 
Was loaded on the silence's profound 
But left the silence sweeter where it drowned. 
Or never word the silence broke, yet had 
The silence glowed with that so full, had dwelt 
No pause. It was the deep, portentous lull 
Wings in the heavy laborings of the storm. 
Was love diffused, through all infused so bright, 

74 



A SUMMER IDYL 



They saw not love — knew not 'twas Love enthroned 
The hour. They only knew their souls complete. 

Was heaven so near their souls all dizzy stoopt 
To earth, and steadied them with chaff of words — 
Mere commonplaces, yet so tinctured all, 
Each lightest as a censer burned with sweets. 

A bluebird, like a blossom floating by. 

Carried joy upon its wings; a robin near 

Fluted a strain caged all a gladness in 

Each honeyed bar. So thin a veil is that 

'Twixt life and death; 'twixt joy and sorrow's gloom 

Whose slightest rent, alas ! too often yields 

Unto the flood swells only sorrow's tide. 

Such flood of damask filled the western skies 
As heaven unlooped her richest tapestries 
To veil the sinking gold with rarer dyes ; 
Earth sings in green-gold bliss of it — and dies 
To live again with other glad sunrise. 

And Edmond, musing on the day's decline, — 
"Come moments are so ripened with their fruits 
They bring the season's end ; show forth the roots 
Of other calendars, bulked with the times 
Inherit alien hours and stranger themes." 

And Clarice, tasting never but a joy, — 
"And never fruit but drops its seed to grow 
A better one, if we would have it so: 

75 



A SUMMER IDYL 



The rounded hour, the ended joy, 

But dies to bring a larger one's employ" — 

"But oft the bitter plains must intervene 
To space the yawning distance lies atween. 
It is a pretty tongue paints ever joy 
Tho' blackest night doth breed its ink alloy — 
But there be claim sweet sorrow hath a share 
In making spirit growth transcendent fair. 
And, Clarice, when a thorn nests in the heart. 
And blackness wooes the world with woful art. 
What then ? — dost never tremble at the door 
Where all of darkness inky looms before?" 

"I dare not think of such a face of woe 
Without that tender Source of love's o'erflow 
Sufficient unto every evil lines the way 
With precious paving-stones to brightest day." 

**Yet when the heart is palsied neath a blow. 
And reason's sway is but a shattered show. 
Then what of refuge in the marshal'd soul 
To bide the hour — its awful blind control?" 

"A mercy bides within to lock the sense 
From contemplation of its impotence." 

"But why the woe that muffles it in night. 
And robs the senses of their orbed sight?" 



76 



A SUMMER IDYL 



"And never misery's channel enters there 
Where no infraction of the law's laid bare." 

"But misery stings the infant soul to death — 
What law is here deprives it of its breath?" 

"The law of Love may rule it for a star 
To beacon some lost soul where angels are ; 
And all of misery's forefended there 
In what the life was saved of carking care — 
But heavy thoughts unto the heavy soul ; 
Be lighter sweets this sweetest hour's control. 
The gadding butterfly, what care hath he ? 
And we, with life and youth, what more would we?" 

"But ere we bid the lighter winds prevail. 
Let's something more of this for future sail. 
Where silence set a tender heel on mirth, 
Did something of a rarer grace unearth : 
There's something in the ripened evening glow 
Makes mention of the loftier things we'd know. 
Methinks yon sky with sweet portent brims o'er, 
And tells a tend'rer tale than e'er before ; 
And e'en the earth doth tremble neath our tread 
As tho' its tremblings spoke some sweetest dread." 

"Methinks the eye its painter is in what 
Is ordered from within: the troubled soul 
Bows not to beauty in its desolate hour ; 
Nor sees a beauty passioned on the flower. 
Where tears have set their mist within the shower. 

77 



A SUMMER IDYL 



'Tis soul that sees ; and only soul that is ; 
The rest is but the magic painted there 
From brushes dipt within. We make all fair 
By what we feel^ or fill with desert air." 

'Then never storm were all a storm, but fair. 
And never hung a cloud in heaven's air — 
Because the eye that must, but sees it fair?" 

'Nay, trouble clouds the soul to hang its sign 
Where seems the outer world to give it shine. 
But why should trouble load our tongues with weight 
Of useless care.^* Choose we a lighter freight." 

' 'Tis conjured of the hour bears on us still 
To load us with the burthens that it will ; 
In some far off and beggared hour awaits 
The lonely pilgrim at the shrine of Fates, 
Comes hunger in the soul for what is not — 
Then this shall be its lovedest dwelling spot ; 
For memory shall so load the eye to bear 
Through every loaded ill this prospect fair. 
Shall be its sweet resort — its tender meal 
When every baser thing refuses heal." 

And memory's after-hour did grip with chains 
The music loaded on that memory's pains 
Tone-deep as undersurge of moaning wind. 
And sweet as mercy where a heart has sinned. 



78 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Low fell the dying embers of the sun 

To pale in ashes chill with night; and one 

By one a silver torch flung its white tongue 

Of flame upon the velvet of the dark. 

A spirit moon climbed up the pallid east. 

Like some pure lily lifting whitened bloom 

Did sift its snow of spirit-petals fine. 

Till earth was spirit in the fine white shine. 

And steeple, tower, and dome were things divine. 

'Twas bliss to live ; the heart had craved no more- 
Avowing choice. O cruel oft in joy 
We're sharpening the dart that turns on us 
Its mort'lest thrust. 

Be pitiful, O God. 

*Twas but a scrap of paper held his doom 
Which Edmond, on his dais bright of joy. 
Did eager greet as bearing more of joy 
On fluttering wings, — so innocently white. 
So pure it gleamed within the courier hands ! 
A simple word recalling him to town : 
Some business snarl his presence claimed at once 
To work its cure. There was nor that in words 
So dire; but, like a poison-venom'd dart 
From ambush of the dark, it fed the veins 
With slow death ! 

Shivering slightly as he rose. 
As if the air rushed cold, he seemed to feel 
A petrifaction stealing in his bones 
As all of youth died in his limbs, stone-cold. 

79 



A SUMMER IDYL 



That all so light a current bore such weight 

To drop in lead upon his soul ; at first 

His cold, numb'd faculties had little power 

To grope for what of meaning lay behind, — 

So light essayed to toss its import off 

As light, whiles staggering action voiced return ; 

Tho' what of words was like the wandering wind — 

For essence breathed, save borrowed from the tone 

Unnatural, steely clear, like lightning, flashed 

Athwart ink clouds the heavens hooded o'er 

With gloom, gashes its vivid way to set 

Unnatural gloom behind. The words froth'd light 

Before, to steady joy, must still be vent 

For joy turned pain. 'Twas of the dews he spoke 

Menaced the bright hair, fallen loose ; the path 

Some treachery held for careless wanderers ; or 

The nights unduly bright meant this, or that : 

So cruel light his speech ; so twang'd his heart — 

A wounded lyre, pang-rent with broken chords ! 

The road lay cruel hard and flint before. 
With all its flower-shine turned dullest ore, — 
That jewel-spangled path shone heaven in — 
What was it but dull sign where joy had been! 
For that, what was the day or night, or all 
Of heaven above, held never Clarice more ! 

The stately towers gleamed ghostly white, and all 
The spectral casements wore their usual face, 
The elms their generous shadows threw ; and yet 
What was this thing had happened to the world 

80 



A SUMMER IDYL 



To still the i3ulse within his breast^ and all 
The senses chilled with what its horrors spoke ? 

Arrived, he sat him down as one fatigued ; 

His senses_, slow recovering from their stun. 

He wakes to face the bitter truth ! to leave 

It all ; to stupid yield to lesser call 

Than e'en his heart's demand — here deathless wed. 

Why, gracious heaven, hangs some mistake ; 'tis but 

Too serious reading of but idle lines, 

O'erclaim their power to clap on chains so vile. 

Was't not for him stood nature's vials uncorked ? 

His urgent need } Why, 'twas but robbery rank 

To snatch a sick man from his medicine. 

To his now summered nature gleamed the town 

All chilly cold ; the warmth was what he craved. 

And yet a deeper hunger preyed within 

For what was life itself — this Clarice child. 

Down the long lane of bitter days to come 

Who was to guide her rambles more ? Nay, who 

Should guard her tender head but him alone.'* 

He clutched the silly scrap so charged with pain ; 

He'd smooth it out, and read again — to find 

Hit over-haste misled, and all was jest. 

Ah, God ! Was that a thorn his heart did nurse, 

So keen it pricked ^ All purblind as he gazed, 

From churn'd-up wave of trouble in his eye. 

The words did dance and mock his glimmering sight. 

But something of their meaning stood out clear — 

Portentous as the cryptic words dealt doom 

81 



A SUMMER IDYL 



To Babylon's king, in what beyond them lay, 

As they themselves turned fire to eat their way 

Into his brain, with forty adder'd tongues 

To sting and cauterize the wound. 'Twas truth 

Gashing its way into the quivering soul ! 

It was the lightning bolt struck sharp within 

To plow a crimson furrow, stained with guilt 

Each vivid line zigzagg'd his soul. It was 

The rankling dart should sleep within its wound — 

The living fountain of a bleeding woe. 

Till every feature bleached with pain of it. 

And nature swooned with staunchless drain of it. 

It was the conscience stung unto the quick. 

The heart-pangs of a love set up their prick : 

Young love, all tender sprung, must starve itself. 

E'en sicken unto death — and be no more. 

'Twas love's sunrise to show an awful guilt 
Black-hooded o'er the soul's horizon, quenched 
The sweet-sprung fountains in their bed of joy. 
And hope — a starveling reft of every buoy. 

And O the curse of it ! And O the pain ! 
Why, God in heaven, what had he done ! Ye earth 
Give way beneath his feet ! Deny him breath, 
Refuse him life, but fortified his guilt ! 

Ay, was illumination backward streamed 

O'er all the charmed road stript bare the truth. 

Was revelation writ on every stone ; 

In every tuft of grass her foot had press'd 

82 



A SUMMER IDYL 



To print its daintiness on ; in every shade 
That spoke the brightness of her eye withdrawn ; 
In every star that flash'd its lovelight true ; 
In every sun that coursed the brilliant blue. 
The heart and soul o' his soul^ this slender maid 
It was gript him as e'en with "hooks of steel" 
T' the heaven of her — the all of heaven for him ! 

And now the picture of another one — 

That other one claimed all of honor's due. 

And love's, swung its dark frame between to blot 

The dear blue eyes forever from his path. 

Ah, had it but the power for that 'twere well. 

But Memory ! who yet hath bridled it.^ 

Who putteth it in stall to hush its cries 

Till breeds no more the pangs more cruel than 

death ? 
Was it not perfidy with hydra head 
Whose thousand tongues were hissing him to scorn? 
And he had claimed an honor's robe — poor fool ! 
And held himself a little 'loft where men 
Went wrong ; e'en eyed the culprit o'er from top 
To toe with such cool eye as scanned a fish. 
Or something of a species wide diverged 
From human kindredship, or human love ; 
Walked high in air with such a virtuous nose 
As sneezed at slightest scent of garbage caste 
Of men, whose doings were a thing apart. 
Yet here he stood — a human monster grown, 
All free to pasture in a woman's breast 
And rifle it of its most precious jewel — 

83 



A SUMMER IDYL 



The heart, and walk off free, nor shot to death ! 

Ye gods ! and such an angel-devil face 

Should bear the cage of pestilence; be shut 

Behind the muzzle for such rabid beasts: 

Who wear the face of crime loud advertise 

Their danger's circuit all, but these dare-dogs 

Do mask them with sweet-scented virtue — ^kill 

Suspicion with so clean a face, a maid 

Her bosom's finest sacrifice pours out 

For them, herself an offering to these gods. 

These bestial creatures better crawled the dust. 

And here were two his viper bosom held 

Their sweetest confidence; unclouded trust. 

He saw himself a monster reptile cloud 

Disgorged its evil drench where love alone 

Should bear the wound ; the tender breast of love — 

Whose only fault was just in loving him. 

As if he singled out these twain alone 

From all the world for that no blacker hate 

Had ever yet devised : to wanton coil 

His serpent folds about a wounded love 

And crush with mortal pangs the breast that bore ! 



84 



XI 



The moon Jcept to her angel course in heaven, 
And every star clang' d down its silver groove; 
Tho' mortal oak hy dreadful storm he riven, 
Serene ahove the eternal pageant's move. 

Thou God alone canst be our certain stay, 
Our poor earth blisses run aground in pain, 
And man is but a plant that dies for rain 
Without thy living dews. We fill our day 
With wild excesses all too sweet to slay — 
And then descends the night. 'Tis all in vain 
The untam'd spirit rules ; within's the bane — 
The worm i' the bud to breed its own decay. 

Earth joy is like the gorgeous rose where e'en 
A breath may sway its pulse to blush or pale 
Its life. O'er freely drawn's, the rising gale 
Of its own passions fretted through so keen 
It breaks the tenement all frail doth lean 
On its support. Is Joy's sweet self so frail ! 

God rides upon the storm in every sky, 
Through every calm shines out his loving eye. 
Tho' shut be heaven's doors, and anguish'd eyes 
See naught but tempest's fury, and thick night 
Of woe doth make its habitation in 
The soul — its every room a cabin'd gloom : 

85 



A SUMMER IDYL 



For storms blow over^ and the dear sun shines. 
And heaven is true. And ever a new grace 
Shines outward from the soul with spirit face 
All angel pure e'en as the fresh-wash'd stars 
That shed their tapers o'er the sepulture 
Of woes the tempest drowned. E'en so, God works. 

Tho' man be very iron, — steel-sinew'd all 

Where valor is the word, or Caesar show 

Of manly parts, — but let a stray shaft strike 

The secret heart of love, he's mortal still 

To own the mortal wound pricks to the quick 

To drain the inmost caverns of the soul 

Of every fountain'd strength; sets ghastly dews 

Upon the helpless features' pallid pain 

Cold-glimmered as the moon on desert plain 

Where every phantom wears a ghostly white 

To take on spectral horrors ; or that swath 

Through pathless woods, denuded of their green. 

All naked shows the storm-king's awful route 

With ruin's sign in every horrid space. — 

But e'er the weaker vessel in that strife 

That rends with mortal pangs the breath of life. 

Where woman's eyes hoard ever mist of rain 

Soft drowns the agony's edge of grinding pain ; 

And, like a flower, her soul bends neath the woe 

To clasp the sun again when showers go : 

A man stores all the glitter of his pain 

In adamantine ice no fountains drain; 

Refuses him to every genial flow 

Of friendly circumstance would bury woe; 

86 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Would challenge God, and every heaven's face. 

Hold fierce demeanor 'gainst the tides of grace. 

Would battle out the pain in conflict sharp, 

Nor list the finer wooings of the harp 

Of soul sees nothing in the universe 

But folds a blessing in its every curse ; 

Would settle all eternity with one 

Swift blow, time dealt — nor measure up his loss 

But gain that should be settled thus all quick. 

There's nothing in his composition for 

The finer strain where sweet endurance bides 

Its time, and, womanlike, yields all to God 

Till, womanlike, finds every solace there 

Where every solace is to mortal prayer. 

Love writhed in mortal pain. No less the freight 

Of guilt lay on his soul — a mountain weight. 

In sight of men he was a branded thing; 

Unholy, leprous in the sight of God. 

But O ye kindly heavens ! what star is this 

New risen with the holy balm of peace } 

Tho' idiocy be despised thing 

Shall not a virtue here all lowly spring ? 

His weakness 'twas, and ne'er his willing crime 

Did desecrate that purest earthly fane — 

A woman's heart. Playing fool, tho' blindly e*er. 

Had brought its curse, but cleared him of the part 

A knave had played. Thank God, his honor dear, 

That precious jewel of his manhood's soul. 

Was left. 



87 



A SUMMER IDYL 



And some of this essayed his tongue. 
But dry and rasping stuck within his throat 
The words ; poor things at best, how helpless now 
On lips they froze upon to frame a cure. 

For long he sat there quivering in his woe. 

He'd not defile her while his memory scourged 

By touching e'en her tender palm, thereby 

To make her hate the memory of his love. 

But inward railed : why was the light let in 

That drove a guilt with cruel spikes. Why not 

A-mercy-smit with blindness ere he saw 

A heaven forbid ? With hot rebellion all 

His fiery nature rose in arms against 

Injustice keen did dangle bait so sweet 

To mock his soul. Of all things pure, of all 

Things consecrate to spur him on to good. 

To feed his manhood's might, — here lay the root. 

The other life had grown afar; so far 
Distasteful grew the sick'ning memory of 't. 
But heaven ruled : an honor surged his breast, 
Tho' memory's self must ever live to taunt 
With cruel thrusts its seemingbreach. Kind heaven- 
Must ever live ? Then this should be his staff 
To lean upon when duty swerved. The sight 
Of this pure one in memory's eye should be 
The Model to whose shaping evermore 
The other should conform, in what his hands 
Could shape it so — e'en angel fair as she. 



88 



A SUMMER IDYL 



But bitter thought. Wherever was a throne 
Such miracle of majesty should own? 

Tho' heaven lay all behind^ unconscious-sprung. 

His conscious sowing lay before; e'en what 

His hands assured from seed of this was hope 

Of heaven more : or this but failed, 'twas not 

Nor learnt the bitter lesson well ; nor failed 

The heaven's sun of that dear past to show 

Him how. Nay, rather that its sun withdrawn — 

His strength but wilted in the sickly air 

Whose waterings richened but a bitter crop. 

But, God ! If pain his cordial was, the sear 

Of iron his curse, what of the child so crushed } — 

The heart of woman burst with such sweet might. 

Such force ecstatic e'en her being threats ? — 

This tender blossom child all fever-forced 

To bloom before its time ; where all the strength 

Of it its beauty fed — or rude wind struck. 

Its blight were sure ; this tender lamb, O God ! 

To slaughter led by sharp decree of fate : 

Grant all thy bosom's love to shield her now 

From her own heart's deep wound — ^the quick of 

pain 
Live-coiled within her breast. This fluttering dove. 
Warm from the parent nest, untutored e'en 
To hint of hurt in all the life's sweet past — • 
To tremble in the storm, he loosed himself 
Upon her childish brow. 'Twas agony 
New-flamed to scorch his very soul. 



89 



A SUMMER IDYL 



At last 
His nerveless tongue essays its custom'd use; 
Makes feint to speak the stiffened words must out 
An honor built. Tho' with despair's death grip, 
He stayed the torrent of his love, the tone 
All helpless gave his agony's secret up. 

With keenest stroke his quivering passion struck — 
Cut heaven loose, and left them twain by all 
The heaven's laws were one ; the past stript bare 
To name that other one in town ; nor spared 
Himself — as from a noble habit, still 
Essayed the noble part. 

A manly tone 
Grew on his speech — put all of misery by. 
That honor snatched from precipice of guilt 
Her pure seal set upon his lips — no word 
Disloyal should sully them with chains he bore — 
Turned chains in light of these all sweeter days. 
E'en gathered of his courage a new tone. 
With sprightliness infused — thereby to cure 
The pain within her breast. Tho' ever ice 
Lay at his heart, no bow of his should brush 
Her quivering heart-strings o'er with more of pain 
By that he brought. By that fine sense within 
His own bruise woke, he knew — less finger'd o'er — 
The quicker healed. The anguished heart but bleeds 
The freelier for the surgeon's knife, tho' kind. 

At last he rose — nor claimed an answering word ; 
Himself had set the final seal of doom ; 

90 



A SUMMER IDYL 



What was there left of words but paltry terms 
All idly lengthened out a misery's chain ? 

But in that hour had all of summer died 

In icy grip of anguish at their hearts, 

With every hope laid out in rattling shroud. 

It was as if the heavy chain of years 

Had dragg'd them down to stranger gates_, and set 

Them wide apart, with memory stalking 'tween 

To goad with all the sweet remembered things. 

It was the heart of pain entomb'd alive — 

Air-lock'd, whose only cure was but to die. 

But love — is its immortal part — what death, 

What time, or all eternity, may stay } 

Tho' he had come through fire with awful scath 

He yet was finer for the crucible : 

For love he could not quench — he could endure. 

Yet, God forgive ! his palm closed over hers 
As it cemented e'en their very souls 
In th' act. What tho' his parting words intoned 
No deeper hint, his eyes, like untam'd suns 
Acknowledging no higher laws, sang out 
'Tho' law of all the heaven and earth be broke- 
Heart of my heart, my love — for evermore !" 

And forth into the pallid night he reeled. 
With brow to heaven bared — if so the pure. 
Cold stars might cool the fever of his brain, 
And train his pulses to their measured calm. 

91 



A SUMMER IDYL 



But ever as he walked swayed round and round 
In circles meaningless^ as idle reed 
Sways in the wind for other reason none 
Than that it must — nor purpose in the act. 

And ever as he paced the lonely world 
He faced a future blank of every hope ; 
And_, seeing naught but every stay removed 
In her he loved, did all of courage die. 
And every resolution break its curb. 
For what are we but children, helpless all. 
In our extremity.'' 

And manhood ebb'd; 
And reason held a tottering throne ; while e'er 
A vain despair lone parleyed with her woe. 

Yet somewhere in the peaceful land of stars 
Some tender listeners lean'd o'er the bars 
To catch the accents — all of pain to hear, 
And pity anguish with a flowing tear ; 
Nor made report to God till that sweet dew 
Renourished all the heart to duty true. 

"Thou, God, seest me the guilty wretch I am — 
Wearing virtue's mask whose heart seethes hell 

within ! 
Thou knowest I have played my bitter part 
How poor ! that I but lie, since 'tis my love 
Alone is true ; all else but false. What is 't 
I owe where love is not to sanction what 
Be offered .f* 'Tis all viler than withheld. 
But a deformed hand would proffer it. 

92 



A SUMMER IDYL 



At heart I'm all gone wrong; I hate the life 
Seals her not mine. Take it, avenging God ! 
To fling it where thou wilt. Worthless to me. 
What is 't to thee, thou shouldst prolong it here ? 
Sink rather to their native hell these bones 
But breed corruption with their use of life. 
Nay, what have I with thee — a spotted thing. 
All leprous foul — with high Divinity, — 
This churning, seething, madden'd strife within. 
Or what, with these eye-balls stung blind to all 
Of joy, to ever more of happy light. 
Could sight invoke of thee — just recompense! 

"Come, thick night, closet me in darkness vile ! 
Let not my soul range out its caged bars. 
Lest fouler matter do pervade these acts. 
Undone ! Unclean ! O monster wretch ! O time ! 
Embowel me in seasons foul! Let ne'er 
My sense accursed know freedom's light again — 
A thing distraught, for fortune's malice mark'd. 
Chained ! Chained ! to foul misfortune chained ! 

Lock-step 
With blackest fate, condemned to dungeon-hold ! 
No more for me the sweet and wooing light 
Of day, the rosy-spangled dews of morn ! 
But darkness, night, and caves, are fit abode. 
Be't far apart from man, this flesh attaint 
Shall evermore its deep pollution drink ! 

"Nor ever had I guessed the heart was all, — 
To hold a thousand aches within its thrall, 

93 



A SUMMER IDYL 



To drag the soul all quivering in its fall ! 
All blindly ruled this puny flesh had claim 
To some of agony, being hurt ; henceforth 
Flesh-qualms be toothsome to the soul's despair 
Makes common pain seem but a revelry. 
'Tis what the mind yields to, all helpless quite. 
Will smit from under — there is all of hell ! 
Come Death ! thou'rt sweeter than this thrall of life. 
Physician Death ! with but a scratch lets out 
The blood of pain, draws out the fever-sting, — 
A gurgle, and a gasp — then kindly sleep. 
How sweet ! all pulseless swathed in dreamless 

sleep — 
And joy its death-watch ne'er again shall keep ! 
God spare me subtler draught of misery. 
With daily wastings trickles out the life — 
The long lean lane all dusty crawls to death. 
Give me the hemlock my own hand denies. 
Dissembling virtue e'en in this poor hour ! 
That kindly juice bids memory die, kind God, 
But to forget! — had made its chalice sweet." 

All blind he stumbled on to death in life, 
Sith life itself should be one long despair 
Whose prison portals oped on death's demesne; 
And all the night re-echoed with his wail 
Loud-sounding down its hollow-vaulted pale. 

Yet 'twas a sorrow's ever mortal'st dart 
Remembering still another's aching heart: 
That one, and sorrow, in the moonlight pale 
Slow wrestling with the moments as they fail ! 

94 



XII 
CLARICE 

May pitying angels tend thy heart whiles tense 

Pang-cords strain at its very roots; the deep 

Soul-anguish leaves each faculty asleep 

Save only inborne^ rushing blinding sense 

Of desert desolation; — impotence 

Of spirit, as sinking, yielding sands did creep 

To offer suffocation ! 

They that weep 
But happy are ; their tears a recompense. 

But that pain-blast that shrivels up the soul, 
And dries the fountain'd tears; with cap of woe 
Seals up the inner source of joy's o'erflow. 
To shut the heart within its vaults, and roll 
The stone of silence at the door ! — Death's dole 
Were sweeter — gave to thee an ended foe. 

O I would see thy cheek more pale than e'er 
The ebbing founts of joy could paint it so. 
Than surg'd-up bloom to taste but death's cold dews, 
All blighted by a broken heart, — with fuse 
Ne'ermore to light its hope; thy portion woe. 
And only night to shrine its misery there. 



O poet heart, how shall thy task be done, 
Doth bitter pain alone thy heart o'errun! 



95 



A SUMMER IDYL 



And Clarice liv'd on^ even as the heart 

So stricken must — not dead; nor Clarice more, 

But that all empty thing of soul bereft. 

As lonely towers the moonlit peak's cold shaft 

All ghostly crowns the mountain's brow, ice-keen 

Shiv'ring the light into a million gems — 

So brilliant-hard, so lifeless cold its face, — 

So hers when Edmond pass'd out of her life. 

Out of her life ! Did warp and woof e'er part 

Whiles th' texture liv'd — the fabric of the life? 

Inwoven with the fiber of her being, — • 

A very vital part of her, — no more 

Could severed be than organ of the heart 

Disunioned from the body still left life. 

It was despair transmuted into stone ; 
A soul in sculpture bore as much of warmth. 
A pure snowdrop in crannied rock of fate 
All beaten by the gale — thy mercy, God! 

An all a mercy had a fever raced 
The throbbing veins, where was a worser cased. 
To drain the heart of its all poison'd grief. 
And through oblivion course a sweet relief. 
But 'twas not thus to be — pain burnt out so — 
With every conscious pang a muffled woe. 
But daily gratings of the tender soul 
'Gainst iron bars that prison'd in her dole. 

The tempest had assailed her childhood's soul. 
Uprooted it of every childhood's goal, 

96 



A SUMMER IDYL 



To plant in's stead a woman's face drained dry 
Of all that life or hope is watered by ; 
Implanted in the fountained wells of light 
The glitter of the steel, unduly bright. 
Betrayed the furnace lay behind; the woe 
Found never mercy's tearful overflow. 
The sweet red mouth, the vermeil of the cheeks, 
Pump'd of their ruby by the heart that speaks 
Of deadly ills, did languish pale ; and e'er 
The plaintive smile bore signal of despair. 
Ay, something in the pure face bore the print 
Where sternest years had hoarded up their flint 
Within her brow to set it marble cold — 
A frozen grief sculpt Out in human mold. 

All isolate as the moonlit peak, ice-cold. 

Since none could touch her grief to break its hold. 

She walk'd like one e'en dead of all desire — 

With every hope laid on its funeral pyre. 

Nor ever dews of heaven bore down to break 

The cold despair held sweet for love's sweet sake. 

'Twas pain turned granite grimly yielded not — 

The shaft gleamed o'er the heart's low burial plot. 

And day succeeded day with weary pace; 
And night o'erlapt the bitter nights of woe. 
Nor ever was a peace enthroned within — 
It was as if a lily droopt its snow 
And wilted on the stem where life had been. 



97 



A SUMMER IDYL 



So on a twilight on the great stone steps 
'Twas just a little heap of misery wan_, 
All crumpled down like some small wounded thing. 
Her faithful spaniel fawned the lily hand — 
'King Charlsey, feed me not such rueful looks — 
The heart but breaks such melancholy brooks ! 
Your dumb eyes plead such anguish and such woe 
As never mortal could a bitterer know! 
Go choose another for your frolic hours ; 
Show off your pretty graces and your dowers 
To woo a mistress with a lighter heart, 
Whose merry humors form your counterpart. 

For me — O Dukesey, can't you see, I'd rest. 

Just rest ! out somewhere on the earth's wide breast 

To fling me down, and nevermore take up 

The chain of things — the bitter, bitter cup ! 

But I would have you wander there and see 

The little ridge of earth that shelters me — 

And nestle in the grass, and guard her there — 

You've ever faithful guarded otherwhere. 

Now, Dukesey, down ! fret not for Clarice more, 

But skip and bound all gayly as of yore, — 

For what's a mistress more or less } Where I 

So cherished am, another in your eye 

May prove a glad exchanging by and by. 

O that will do ! I know what you would say ! 

Nay, do not swear such ardent vows, they may 

Be sooner broke: thus higher creatures do. 

And swearing most, do what they swear undo." 



98 



XIII 

And in the passing cloud the sun was hlot; 
And hope took wings of utter night; 

But see, the glory of the morn upshot 
'Mid golden-missiVd showers of light! 

Two months had lengthened out their weary chain^ 
Whose every weary hour had ebb'd in vain. 
Nor ever hung the shining pendant there — 
The holy cross absolved a soul's despair. 

And e'er the wan face, like a blossom lone. 

Had seen the last of all its fellows die. 

Itself caught in a sheath of icy mail, 

Was like a sorrow lash'd to a cold despair, — 

A frozen grief on the dead stem of hope. 

At last her aimless footsteps led once more 

The old familiar ways, and ended there 

Where Clarice droopt within the fragrant bower— 

The same had brought that other day and hour 

Throned Edmond chief of every day and hour; 

And there as memory pined beneath its woe 

Her eyes were lifted up to God's high throne — 

And heavenly dews suffused their violet depths; 

And all the weary drought, like perish'd earth. 

Drank in refreshment from their sacred founts ; 

And as they freely rang'd o'er leaf and vine, — 

With light of them kiss'd all with tender shine, — 

99 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Saw never but the face of Edmond there: 
The brow with honor's signet blazon'd fair, 
All clustered o'er with lifted locks, wind-breathed, — 
So like a god's, with fadeless blossoms wreathed; 
The eyes shrined twin-set sloes within their night — 
And what they said ! with eloquence alight ; 
The smile, sun-gleaming, sweet as angel's kiss — 
Search all the wide world over — was but his ; 
And O the voice ! more silverj'^-toned than flute's ; 
More coaxing sweet than ever night-born lute's 
Woke in a maiden's ear neath tranced moon; 
The manly breast had been such anchor firm 
To couch a weary little head : so rush'd 
The memory flood, the heart made bitter moan. 

No word had come; no rumor of his life. 

A slight noise near, — the snapping of a twig, — 

She heeded not, intent on other days. 

But idly turned, as one that held a book, 

The finger guarding where the eye forsook — 

The outer gaze still holding inward look. 

And giving ever but a listless ear. 

But half attends the words he scarce doth hear, — 

So turned as one would flick a teasing fly 

Assaults the ear with buzzing minstrelsy — 

To catch twin bolts from out those love-brimm'd 

eyes 
Globed all of heaven within their sweet surprise. 



100 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Dear God ! had she but lived through white-hot paia 
To down at last 'fore gleaming shaft of joy ! 

She pales like death; had fallen like a leaf 
A breath kiss'd from its stem, when Edmond's self 
Her refuge was, crush'd close within his arms 
As death itself should part them nevermore, 
As slow the blue dazed eyes drank in the truth. 
And all the bosom filled with sense of heaven. 
As some pale lily in the vaulted dark. 
Transplanted to the open, lifts its head 
Against the breast of earth to God's sweet sun, 
And drinking joy and warmth — runs all to bloom. 
With all its breath poured out in incense sweet, — 
So was his breast the earth, his heart the sun. 
The tender petals opened one by one. 
And all the little drooping flower of love 
Was nourished back to life and hope and heaven — ^ 
So magic is a breath to change the world ! 

Then, as the sweets of words in silence steeped 
Brewed sweeter ale, came memory's rushing tide — 
'But Edmond, wherefore come, and what of herf" 

His eyes, run o'er with love till now, recoiled 
As there some hated sight his loathing roused. 
'My angel-pure, her name would foul the heavens ; 
Let't not be mentioned here to soot our joy ! 
Yet 'tis a theme doth most concern the time. 
Whose bitter adds the sweetest flavoring to't — 
Since 'twas the open sea to ready sails 

101 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Lands here my barque and all it bears of hope. 

The heaven vouchsafed her beauty's form and face, 

But left a heart out of that organ's place; 

The bauble of a title shone so bright 

Her all of honor perished in its light: 

Came one all tinsel'd from a foreign court 

And looked her over, with a bargain eye 

All lecherous trained upon her coffered gold, 

And coolly bid upon the shining heap 

The princely person and the pauper state. 

She to the terms her willing sanction lent — 

With plighted hand confirmed the sacrament; 

And now they ride upon the briny seas 

In bridal revelry^ — to drink the lees 

Of foul dishonor from the poison'd cup 

Whose rankling grows upon the lips that sup. 

So bartering both, are mated over well. 

And only God can bound their future hell! 

My little flower, 'tis God gives you to me — 

'Fore Him and men I claim my legacy." 

So entered in his heaven, but made pause 

Upon the threshold as he'd set his soul 

In some more pure array — all humbly strick'n 

With deep unworthiness ; and as he stood 

A sudden gold lay circled on his brow. 

As spirit hands had placed a halo there, 

Wrought of the flame leapt from the dying sun, — 

Like that last flared-up torch of dying fires 

Lights up the glazing sight of mortal eyes 

At Heaven's unfolding splendors; in that last, 

102 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Supremest moment, as a mortal spasm 
Shakes free the soul to ascend on wings of light 
To an immortal glory, — some such light 
As this in saintly radiance tipp'd his brow — 
As words of living flame this seal did set: 
Be here the carnal dies ; let spirit ascend. 

He who had drained the bitter dregs of woe. 
Moiled in rebellion's mire, held God his foe, — • 
All glory-smit in that spirit white of light 
As one transfigured stood — his strong white palm 
In air: 

"Offended Majesty of Heaven! 
In my deep woe I wandered far from Thee, 
Despised thy ways, shook off thy hand of love 
For demon rule — to know the tortues of the damned ! 
Lord God! unsearchable are all thy waj'^s, 
Thy love and mercy past all finding out: 
Thou reachedst down thy hand to midmost hell. 
Smote Satan dumb, redeemed me from his power, — 
Yea, freed me for the rapture of this hour — 
The promised bliss beyond the tongue to tell. 
In Love's own paradise henceforth to dwell; 
So all unworthy of her heart's pure dower, — 
O give me grace to tremble at the Power, 
The unfathom'd Breast where love doth endless 

well. 
Be to us twain our ever constant stay. 
Let memory never sleep, nor chains of sense 
Bind us to slumber while an ease contents — 
Lest we forget ! At feet of Love I pray, 

103 



A SUMMER IDYL 



keep us ever in thy beauteous way 

To find in Thee life's utmost competence. 

*An awful blackness gulphed my sinking soul, 

1 floundered helpless in a tossing sea 

While frenzied tides ran all the frame of me. 
Yea, courted death, made it my feverish goal; 
Loud shrieked for maddest elements' control 
That from a horrored world should shake me free. 
The blue sky what — or song-birds more to me 
Whose wide, wide earth stretched but a sea of dole ^ 
And now sweet peace thy gracious love confers. 
And all the tender dawn of happy days. 
How shall my bitter tongue be taught its praise. 
My soul be purified to mate with hers 
So pure the very thought of it upstirs 
The inward tremblings of a deep amaze ! 

'And Thou hast stoop'd to chain the brute in me, 
Thou Emperor of Heaven ! hast set me free, 
And dowered me with this angel heart so pure 
I can but sully with my human greed 
Of it ! O drug me not with syren pleasure. 
Lest I but damn me in unholy joy ! 
Cure my proud lusts in thy absolving love; 
Lay not my past upon my soul above 
Thy pardoning grace. On th' altar of my love 
Burn out my sins with thy forgiving eyes. 
To blur no more the record books of Heaven. 
By all this lily soul untaint with sin 
Draw thou me up to her on her white throne. 

104 



A SUMMER IDYL 



Seal us twain thine to work thy will — all pure 
As singly ruled the virgin breast of snow. 
E'en as by pain thou'st taught her worth to me- 
By hallowed joy of her I'd still be taught 
Through contact with a breast so pure to lift 
A soul pure as the lily's — constant breathes 
A golden incense at thy feet^ O God !" 



105 



BEG 18 1911 



One CQpy del. to. Cat. Div. 
•EC 18 ^955 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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